


Brief Encounters, a novella in three parts

by WorryinglyInnocent



Series: Brief Encounters [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Golden Lace, Rushbelle, Sequel, novella-length fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:40:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2532746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to 'Preludes', a birthday gift for <a href="http://ripperblackstaff.tumblr.com"> Ripperblackstaff </a>. After Lacey leaves him in the darkened alley outside a dingy hotel bar in Rome, Gold makes the decision to take a chance and go after her, little knowing that in the chain of events that is about to occur, he is not the only one who will be swept up in the whirlwind that Lacey leaves in her wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One - Rome

**Author's Note:**

> Ages ago, [ ripperblackstaff](http://ripperblackstaff.tumblr.com) sent me [ picture prompt ](http://ripperblackstaff.tumblr.com/post/88986222033/worryinglyinnocent-aka), which turned into [ this little Golden Lace ficlet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2527832). I, foolish young thing that I am, offered to write her a sequel for her birthday. I was not expecting it to be quite so epic nor quite so down to the wire!

For a long time after Lacey left the alley, Gold stayed staring after her, unsure if it had in fact all been a dream. It had been over so quickly, from coming into the bar to see her lustful eyes tracking him as they always did, to deciding to act on it, to now - the deed done and him standing alone in the dark wondering what to do next.

True, his physical needs had been sated. No doubt Tink would comment that had he got his leg over at the beginning of the trip, he would have been infinitely more pleasant to work with throughout the job. But somehow, Gold wasn't completely satisfied. He wanted something more. There was something about Lacey, something challenging that made him want to know more about her, to solve the enigma that she was. He wondered if she would be averse to knowing more about him. Had she really only wanted this? Had she really hung around in the bar for two weeks just to be happy with a quick fuck outside in an alley? Something told Gold that this was not the case.

He went into the back pocket of his jeans to check that he still had his room key; he'd never forgive himself if he had to go and knock on Tink's door as he was - sweaty, dishevelled and so obviously post-coital that there was no way to hide it. Tink would never let him live it down, either. He found the key, thankfully, but he also found something else, and he pulled out the soft fabric and held it up to the dim light. It was Lacey's G-string, a tiny thing in translucent black polyester. Gold brought the material to his face; it was still slightly damp from her honey and it smelled of her perfume and the sweet musk of her sex.

To hell with it, Gold thought. He was only going to live once and in all likelihood, he'd never see her again after tonight, so even if he completely embarrassed himself, there was no harm in trying.

"Lacey," he called, shoving the panties back into his pocket and breaking into a run out of the alley, looking in both directions to try and spot her.

It wasn't hard; the hotel was on a quiet street and there weren't many people about. She was walking along slowly in the direction of the town centre, barefoot, her head bowed and shoulders hunched, avoiding eye contact with anyone. She no longer looked like the same self-assured young woman who had left him in the alley with a sly smile and barely a word. This was the same Lacey that he had received such a brief glimpse of a few moments ago, the person under the confident veneer that she wore so well it was almost a second skin. This was the Lacey looking for companionship.

"Lacey."

She stopped at his voice and her whole demeanour changed; she straightened and turned to watch him over her shoulder. Her expression was hard to read - Gold couldn't tell if she was pleased or dismayed that he had come after her. He caught up to her and she turned to face him fully, looking up at him. He hadn't realised just how tiny she was without the high heels which dangled from her fingers.

Words failed him. He hadn't exactly planned what he was going to say when he went after her. He had not thought any further ahead than catching up to her, and now that they were standing staring at each other in the middle of the street, his brain had decided that it was a good time to go silent and watch with amusement as he floundered. Lacey's unfathomable expression was patient and expectant. She didn't say anything, waiting for him to make the first move as she had done in the bar. Watching and waiting.

Seduction was not a strong point for Gold. He knew that and accepted it. Words were normally his reliable weapon of choice everywhere, but in the bedroom he just hoped for the best. He took a deep breath, found no words forthcoming, and sighed. Lacey was still waiting calmly for him to say something.

"I..." Gold began. "You... I... Erm..." He let out another long breath. "Do you want to come upstairs?" he asked finally. "You could see my suit," he added, remembering their flirtation at the bar. There were other things that he wanted to say, but he decided against it. If he talked any more he'd only start gabbling, and that was never going to have a good outcome. His ex-wife had commented on it on more than one occasion.

Lacey seemed to seriously consider the proposition before a slow smile spread over her face.

"All right," she said eventually. "I think I'd like that."

Gold couldn't quite believe it and a small part of him was still convinced that it was all going to turn out to be a fantasy and he'd wake up in a minute. Lacey put her shoes back on to bring her up slightly more level with him, and she slipped her arm through his. "Come on, Prof," she said. "Lead the way."

"I do have a name, you know," Gold pointed out as they walked back towards the hotel entrance.

"I know." Lacey grinned. "It's Gold. Just Gold. I don't even know if that's your first name or your surname."

Gold snorted. "I hate my first name."

"At least your middle name isn't Cordelia."

Gold raised an eyebrow at her. "Cordelia? Lacey Cordelia?"

Lacey shrugged. "My mum liked Shakespeare. So what _is_ your name?"

They had reached the hotel at this point, and Gold held the door open for her.

"Maybe I'll tell you later," he said. Lacey's smile was nothing short of vixen.

They fell back into silence as they made their way up to Gold's room. The growing sense of anticipation was back, and this time it held more trepidation with it. There was nowhere to hide in a hotel room. The privacy of the space instantly made it far more intimate than their coupling in the alley had been, but despite this, Gold felt a little more at ease here. This was his room, his domain, he knew where everything was and he felt he had a little more control over the situation, rather than simply letting himself be swept along by Lacey's riotous whirlwind. This time he was the one initiating things.

He didn't bother putting the lights on in the bedroom, going straight into the bathroom and starting the shower. Now that there was no urgency with the fear of being caught in the alley, he was going to take his time, and since he had the luxury of being able to get cleaned up before going for round two, he was going to take advantage of that too.

Lacey raised her eyebrows as he began to strip off, but did not say anything. _You brought me back to your room to take a shower,_ her face said, plainly disbelieving.

"I've been on a dig all day," Gold said. "I'm filthy." He gave a half-smile. "You're more than welcome to join me."

She laughed and shook her head, kicking her shoes off and going over to the bed, perching on it to look around the room. Her eyes landed on his suitcase, open and half-packed ready to go home the next day.

"When are you leaving?" she asked. There was something other than curiosity in her light tone; Gold thought he could sense fear as well.

"I’m due back in Storybrooke tomorrow evening," he said. "Today was the last day. Tomorrow's for lying in and finishing up the paperwork."

Lacey gave an abstracted nod of understanding, her thoughts very evidently elsewhere. The steam was beginning to billow out of the bathroom so Gold went in fully and shut the door behind him. As he finished undressing, part of him - rather a large part if he was being brutally honest - wondered if Lacey would still be there when he came out or whether she would have vanished into the ether, melting into the darkness like she had done when she left the alley earlier. He pushed the thought aside and concentrated on scrubbing away the dust and dirt from the day at the dig site, not wanting to dwell on possible what-ifs.

“Prof?”

Gold turned and saw Lacey pushing back the shower curtain and stepping into the tub. In the soft yellow light of the bathroom he got his first proper look at her body; the alley had been too dark to see anything below her face. Even without his glasses he could tell that she was lovely, all smooth, creamy skin with small, dusky nipples standing proud of pert little breasts, petite but perfectly proportioned with delicious curves, and her hairless cleft with its hint of silver winking at him. In the same moment he realised that she was getting her first look at him in the raw as well, and unlike his vision, hers was crystal clear and his image would not be blurred at the edges.

She seemed oddly shy about her bare skin, her hands twitching as if she wanted to cover herself. Gold held out a hand to invite her closer and she took it, stepping daintily round him to turn her face up to the spray. She seemed more at ease with her back to him. She rubbed her cheeks, washing off the rivulets of make-up that had started to form, and Gold reached out to touch her matted hair, so full of hairspray it could have been glued. It was beginning to untangle under the water, and Lacey tilted her head obediently under his hand to let him rake his fingers through her mess of curls, combing out the snags as best he could and feeling the sticky stiffness from the hairspray melt under the shower jet.

Once her tresses were in a vague semblance of neatness again, Gold was at a slight loss for what to do with his hands. Whilst it could not be denied that Lacey was in the shower with him, he still felt that he didn’t have full permission to simply touch wherever he pleased, however much he wanted to run his fingers all over her soft skin and hold her breasts. He was certain they were just the right size to fit in his hands.

Presently Lacey looked over her shoulder.

“Could you pass me some soap, Prof?” she asked, and she gave her little challenging smirk. With that, free reign had been given, and Gold quirked one eyebrow as he passed her the small white bar. It was the free stuff that was provided in the hotel room; it didn’t lather well and was more smearing and slimy than actually soapy.

Whether through luck or design – although Gold highly suspected the latter – the soap slipped out of Lacey’s fingers as he handed it to her.

“Oops,” she said, completely deadpan, and she bent over to pick it up, presenting him with a wonderful view of her bottom and cleft, glittering with water and her own sweet juices. “I think you’d better hold onto this, Prof. I’m not sure I trust myself with it.”

Gold took the soap back from her, and he ran it over her shoulders and down her arms before taking a chance and slipping his arms round her to touch her breasts, lathering up as best he could and running soapy fingers over her nipples, stroking circles around her areolae. His guess had been correct; her breasts were just the right size for him to cup fully. Lacey gave a soft noise of pleasure and leaned back against him.

“That feels wonderful,” she groaned. “Mmm. Do that again.”

Gold was more than happy to oblige, especially if it meant that she kept making those exquisite little noises.

“You know, I had my first orgasm in the shower,” Lacey said, her tone almost conversational but her heavy breathing betraying her “My sister thought I was drowning, it was hilarious.”

“Let me guess,” Gold said, pressing a kiss to her shoulder and licking away the water droplets there. “Showerhead between your legs.”

Lacey laughed. “Oh yes. And there was I, thinking it was a little secret of the sisterhood, that we can have just as much fun in the shower as you can.”

Gold didn’t say anything. Towards the end of their marriage his wife had preferred the shower’s attentions to his and had not made any attempt to keep that a secret. It did, however, give him an idea. He reached round Lacey and unhooked the showerhead from where it was clipped to the wall, bringing it down to bubble over her skin more closely. She squirmed as he pressed the head against each of her nipples in turn, then moved down towards her thighs, his other hand following with a trail of soap.

“Who knows what might have been in that alley?” he murmured against her shoulder.

“Oh yes,” Lacey breathed, pulling his hand down to her crotch and grinding her mound against his palm. “Makes sense to have a _very_ thorough wash down here.”

She braced one hand on the tiled wall, the other stayed between her legs, fingertips parting her lips as the water jet gushed over her exposed clit. She was quivering in his arms, squealing as he changed the angle of the spray to hit her spread vulva.

“Stop fucking teasing,” she growled.

Gold did as requested, letting Lacey shift her hips to find just the right angle. He slid one finger under the curve of her bottom and stroked along her cleft to bury inside her, coaxing her to take him deeper and deeper as her hips bucked against the water, until she was riding his finger past the knuckle. She came then, a breathy, graceless yell of ‘FUCK!’ as her toes curled in the bottom of the tub and she clenched around his finger. Lacey fell silent and panted as she pushed his arm away, the water redirecting over her feet and washing away the odd fleck of chipped red nail polish.

"Fuck," she repeated, less forcefully this time, then she let out a long hum of satisfaction as Gold slowly pulled his finger out of her. He sucked her honey off his hand; he wanted to get a taste of her even if she didn't let him go down on her once he'd shaved. He reached round her to shut the water off.

Unexpectedly, Lacey turned to face Gold fully. His vision was too misty by this point to see much detail, but as he pushed a dark stripe of hair back over her shoulder, he could feel the goosebumps where her wet skin had cooled without the constant rush over water over it, and he brought his hand down to skim over her breast, rolling her hard nipple under his palm.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Gold kissed her in reply. He had not actually kissed her lips since she had left him in the alley, and this time there was no urgency, no clashes of teeth and tongues in their haste, no accidental biting or banged noses. It was a nervous kiss, and Gold kept expecting Lacey to pull away. Instead, he felt her hands on his shoulders pull him in a little closer, her tongue very gently trying for entrance to his mouth. Gold opened for her eagerly, his hands slipping over her damp skin as he tried to get her closer.

She broke away with a shiver, and Gold knew that it was more to do with the temperature of the cold bathroom than anything else.

“Come on, I think we’re clean enough,” he said, and he pulled the curtain back, handing Lacey out of the tub and passing her a towel before grabbing his own and beginning to dry off. It was a long while before Lacey moved, keeping her towel gathered against her front; the corners just covering her nipples and the apex of her thighs and making her look even more naked. Gold bit back a groan of desire; he was never going to be able to get through a shave without cutting himself if he was this ridiculously aroused again already. Lacey seemed to notice his abstraction and gave a smirk, choosing that moment to move, her own hands following the patterns that his had taken over her body with the soap. Finally she wrapped up her hair in the towel and opened the door to the bedroom.

“Coming, Gold?” she asked demurely.

Gold shook his head, a little bit stunned. It was the first time she’d called him by his name.

“Shave,” he finally managed to blurt out.

Lacey grinned. “Wise move.”

She left the bathroom, hips swaying so invitingly. Gold gripped the basin with white knuckles to prevent him going after her. He watched her in the mirror in the wedge of light from the open bathroom door for a while, observing half-unseen as she wandered around the room in the nude, patting her hair dry before discarding the towel all together and getting into bed. Gold noticed she’d already turned the covers down, but she didn’t pull them back up over her; she just lay there, stretched out luxuriously like a cat. He closed the bathroom door to avoid temptation and make it marginally easier to concentrate.

Not for the first time, Gold wondered if Lacey would still be there when he came out.

X

She should leave. She should get up, put her clothes on, and get out, leaving no trace. But Lacey found that she couldn’t bring herself to move from the bed. She was already in too deep. She’d never intended it to get this far. Even though her sensible side was practically screaming at her to get out whilst she still had some dignity, the rest of her was of the opinion that since she was already in too deep, she might as well continue drowning, because she was guaranteed never to have it this good again. She ought to make the most of it whilst she could.

_No. Move. Get up. Get out. Don’t wait to find out if his mouth is as good between your legs as his fingers are. Don’t do this to yourself, because when it all ends, which it inevitably will in the morning when he goes home to Storybrooke and leaves you in Rome, it will feel ten times worse than it normally does._

Lacey didn’t move. This wasn’t like her. She was sensible. She was careful. She never got in too deep; she always skimmed along like a stone on the surface.

And yet here she was, lying on a bed waiting for a man whose first name she didn’t know, a man who’d seen her naked. Lacey never let her sexual partners see her fully naked. She kept as many clothes on as possible. She was not at all shy about her body; indeed, the week before she came to Rome she’d been working in a lousy strip joint near Venice where they tipped big for the girls who went all the way, and Lacey would never turn down a tip. But that was work, work in front of a faceless crowd. They didn’t care about her as long as she had tits and a shaved pussy, and she didn’t care about them.

This wasn’t work. This was pleasure, and she’d let a very real man with a very real (and, dare she think it, handsome) face see her completely and utterly naked, without her make-up or hairspray or jewellery other than her piercings, without any of her usual armour against the world. Letting someone see her naked in the context of sex made it too close to making love for Lacey’s liking. If she only had her knickers off it could still be classed as a mindless fuck. She had never felt more exposed, not even when she’d been grinding against a pole wearing nothing but her stilettos. (Lacey gave a snort of dry laughter at the memory. She’d left home to see the world. As it had turned out, the world had seen rather a lot of her instead.)

The feeling didn’t scare her in itself. It was the fact it didn’t scare her that made her truly fearful; the fact that there had been no doubt in her mind as she had willingly, eagerly broken her own first rule and taken off all her clothes for a man whose money she didn’t want.

Gold was different though. _You say that every time_ , her mind remarked slyly, but Lacey ignored the snide voice. She’d been with older guys before, she’d been with academics before, but something about Gold was different, different enough to keep her hanging around in that hotel bar for two long weeks, wondering when to make the first move, because up until that evening she had held no illusions that he would. Maybe that was the reason she let him come to her, rather than jumping in with a proposition herself on the first night. His difference. If he came to her, then it was meant to be. If she went to him, perhaps she was forcing fate. Lacey was not one for restraint or delayed gratification. If she wanted something, she went for it. But something about Gold had made her cautious enough to hang back. Fear of rejection? It never normally stopped her; if she was rebuffed she simply picked herself up and moved onto the next conquest. No, it was something more powerful than that, but Lacey hadn’t been able to place it. Of course, as soon as he had intimated that he was remotely interested, Lacey had been more than happy to take the lead again, to go after what she wanted. All she had needed was the barest hint of a first move on his part. It was in the cooling afterwards that Lacey had realised just what it was that she really, truly wanted, and it terrified her. When he’d looked at her through his slightly misted glasses with unknown words on his lips always remaining unspoken, Lacey had realised that she wanted so much more than sex from this man. In that moment, she couldn’t care less about the sex, although she wouldn’t deny that it had been great. She wanted to hold him, to feel his arms around her, to wake up with him. Lacey had not felt like that about any man for a long time, and it was that feeling, that want, which scared her.

That was why she had walked away, barely giving him the courtesy of a goodbye.

Never get too close to people. That was the way she had always lived. Never get too close to people, especially ones you really, really liked. She had a talent for pushing people away when she got too close, and it had served her well. She’d pushed away her dad when she’d told him in no uncertain terms that she was going to drink, strip and sleep her way round Europe rather than going to university. She’d pushed away her best childhood friend when she’d left for France in the middle of the night and not told him until two weeks later, an emotionless text sent from a stranger’s bed. She never got too close to people she cared about. It stopped her getting hurt. She’d done it once before, and she’d vowed never again.

(For a moment, Lacey remembered her mother, and her sunny smile, and she wondered what she would say if she could see her child now. She pushed the thought aside; she never let anyone see her cry and she wasn’t going to break a second self-made rule in one night.)

So she had pushed Gold away, just as she did with everyone she really liked, and left him in the alleyway. But when he had come after her, she had found that she couldn’t push any more. She wanted what he was offering her, and Lacey went after something she wanted with all guns blazing. Against her better judgment, she got close. She got close enough, quickly enough, to let him see her at her most open and vulnerable.

She could still walk away. It would still hurt, but it would be on her own terms. She would be in control of the pain. Lacey shook her head. She’d come this far, she might as well stay a little longer. A little more sex surely wouldn’t hurt too much.

Lacey slipped a hand down between her legs to touch her piercing. She’d got it at a point in her life when she was having some really, truly terrible sex, in the hope that it might give her slightly more pleasure than any of her boyfriends did when they fucked. Normally it was a make-or-break for a guy. Some were completely turned off by it; she’d seen them visibly wilt when faced with the metal decorating her clit. Others went to the opposite extreme and hurt her in their attempts to use it to bring her off. It took clever fingers to give her an orgasm that was just right and left her gasping for breath, and Gold’s were up there with Einstein. She dipped a little lower and felt a ready wetness at her entrance again, just from the memory of his hand touching her there.

The bathroom door opened and Gold emerged, naked but for his glasses. The image made her giggle and he raised an eyebrow at her, smirking slightly. He looked different clean-shaven, neither older nor younger but still different somehow, not in a bad way.

“What are you laughing about?” he asked. Lacey smiled, stretching out like a cat on the bed.

“Nothing. You’re sexy.”

“So are you.”

“The specs really complete the look.”

Gold rolled his eyes. “All the better to see you with, my dear.” He crossed the room and lay down beside her, propped on one elbow, his other hand twisting a damp curl round his fingers. Lacey shifted onto her side to face him properly and reached out to touch the frame of his glasses.

“How bad is your eyesight without them?” she asked. Something in the back of her mind asked her what she was doing, wasting valuable time talking inanely which could have been spent having sex, but the dominant part of her brain told the horrible, sensible voice that this was what she wanted: so much more than just sex.

“Not awful. I can get around. Anything too close is fuzzy though, it gives me a headache.”

Carefully she pulled the glasses off his nose. “Can you still see me?”

“Yes. You’re in soft focus.”

Like a tastefully shot porno, Lacey added mentally. All blurred edges so you couldn’t really see any outlines. She put the glasses on herself and looked over the top of them.

“How do I look?”

“Gorgeous as always.”

As always. They’d known each other for so little time but they’d been noticing each other for far longer. She took the glasses off and handed them back to Gold, who put them on the on the bedside table before gently cupping her face and stroking her cheek, fingers tangling into her unbrushed hair again.

“You are beautiful,” he said.

“Even in soft focus. Come off it, Prof, you can’t see me.” She was calling him Prof again, trying to push him away even now, when all he had done was tell her she was beautiful. Oh yes, she was definitely in too deep.

“I don’t have to see. I have four other senses.”

He kissed her again; this time it was a deep, sensuous kiss, not as desperate and fierce as they had been in the alley but not as tentative and tender as he had been in the shower, a slow, steady burn rather than a flickering ember or a roaring flame.

Lacey grabbed his shoulder, pulling him closer and opening her mouth to capture his bottom lip between her teeth and tug on it, trying to convey her eagerness to continue and go further without the need for words. She felt Gold smile against her mouth and the vibration of a suppressed chuckle through his muscles. He pulled away and danced his fingers down her side to rest on her hip before pushing her over onto her back. Lacey pulled him with her and arched her back, pressing her hips up to meet his abdomen as he began to kiss his way down her body, from her lips over her chin and neck, down between her collar bones, making a detour to swirl his tongue over each nipple in turn and then back down over her sternum and tummy until he reached her mound, and the confidence he’d just shown seemed to die back a little. His tongue was tentative as he dipped the tip into her cleft and nudged her clit piercing gently; Lacey carded her fingers into his hair to press his face closer against her pussy.

“You don’t have to be so gentle,” she said; she didn’t want to put him off completely but she needed him to know that he didn’t have to treat her like blown glass that was liable to shatter at any moment. They’d fucked standing up in an alley, her bare backside grazing the concrete wall; he should know that she was no delicate flower. Still, it had the desired effect, and his next licks to her clit were firmer, more purposeful. He ran one hand up the underside of her thigh and encouraged her to drape her leg over his shoulder, opening her up more and changing the angle. Lacey gasped at the new sensation. It wasn’t the best oral she’d ever had, she would freely admit that, but it was by no means the worst, and what Gold lacked in finesse he made up for in enthusiasm. His fingers did seem to get on better than his tongue; whilst his mouth was hit and miss, his fingers were finding all her secret little pleasure points without fail, and Lacey chalked it up to the delicacy and dexterity he required in his line of work, handling precious artefacts all day. She wondered if he treated his broken china and chipped mosaics with as much care as he touched her.

“Fuck, Gold,” she groaned, “I’m coming, I can feel it.”

The third orgasm of the night, and the most intense by far, a long-building explosion of warm pleasure coursing through her veins and displacing her from everything. Lacey lay back against the pillows as she came back to her body, the spiralling curls of ecstasy gradually dying back. As spatial awareness returned, she felt the steady flow of heat running out of her pussy; she was not at all surprised to see Gold’s lips and chin glistening with liquid as he grinned up at her from between her legs. He began to trail his mouth back up her body, smearing her honey over her skin as he did so, until he was back beside her again. Lacey rolled over leisurely to face him.

“I can’t help feeling a little guilty,” she purred, drawing patterns over Gold’s shoulder with her fingernails. “So far I’ve had three excellent orgasms, and you’ve only had one.”

“Yeah.” Gold looked away, and Lacey fancied that she could see the faint hint of a blush colouring his cheekbones. “I’m not exactly a bright young thing like you, sweetheart. It takes me a little while to get ready to go again.”

There was silence for a moment. Lacey wondered how old he actually was. Forties? She had no idea, but evidently he was older than she’d first pegged him. He was wearing very well. Very well indeed.

“And after all…” Gold dragged his index finger up from her navel and traced around one nipple; it pebbled under his touch and Lacey gave an involuntary squirm of pleasure at the sensation. “The lady always comes first.”

It was Lacey’s turn to look away, blinking against the inexplicable hot stab of shame that shot through her, unable to meet his eyes. If he knew what she’d done to finance her way to Rome, he would not be calling her a lady.

“I’m no lady,” she said bitterly.

She felt Gold’s hand move up from her breast and cup her face, gently turning her head to look at him again.

“You’re a lady to me,” he said. “That’s what matters.”

He had treated her better than a lady, more like a princess, worshipping her like a goddess even. Lacey could not deny that, and she could not deny that she was grateful for it. As detached as she always tried to remain, she had forgotten what it felt like to feel so special, to really feel like a princess to someone.

She ran her fingers down his chest to his stomach and the line of downy hair that ran from his navel to the rougher nest at the base of his cock. He had made her feel like a princess, and the least she could do was attempt to return the favour.

“Well, since the lady is very much satisfied, I think it’s high time the gentleman came again.” She could already feel his cock twitching again under her touch.

“I, ah, I only had the one condom,” Gold admitted, his voice a little sheepish.

Lacey continued to fondle his cock, running her fingertips up and down the vein on the underside and brushing them over the head, feeling him getting thicker and longer with every sweep of her hand. She had a condom in her bag, and she was in two minds about letting Gold know this. She decided against it. It was his turn to be reduced to a puddle of molten jelly. He’d done it to her twice now and she had not seen the full extent of his own raw, naked vulnerability; that one moment at the point of climax when he was completely open and nothing could be hidden or held back.

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Lacey said.

His eyes fluttered closed as she stroked him to full hardness and continued to pump him up and down, working her thumb over the sensitive tip till she felt the first drops of precum begin to leak out. Lacey grinned as she heard Gold groan, and she smeared the beaded liquid over the head of his cock with the pad of her thumb. His hips snapped forward, thrusting frantically up into her hand.

“Christ, Lacey,” Gold groaned.

“Are you close?” she purred.

“So fucking close. Jesus, Lacey, fuck, yes, don’t stop…”

He lost all coherence as Lacey reached down with her other hand to roll his balls in her palm. “Bloody hell!” he yelped as she gave them a gentle squeeze, and a split second later, he came, spurting over his stomach and onto the sheets with a primal growl of release, hands fisting in the pillows.

Lacey waited until he’d opened his eyes again and was looking straight at her before she put her sticky fingers in her mouth and sucked him off her hand, hollowing her cheeks and running her tongue all over her fingertips to lap up every salty trace of his pleasure. Gold groaned at the sight and rolled over onto his back.

“Lacey, you are…” There was a long pause whilst he considered what she was. “Unbelievable,” he finished.

Lacey grinned. “Thank you.”

Gold let out a long, sleepy, satiated sigh, which turned into a grimace as his hand met the splattered semen on his abdomen. “Ugh, I’ve made a right mess there.”

He left the bed and went into the bathroom, returning a few moments later with a handful of tissues for a crude clean-up job.

“That’s better,” he said, balling up the sticky paper and tossing it on the floor.

Lacey didn’t move as he pulled the covers up over them both. Tired and thoroughly satisfied, there was no place in the world that she wanted to be more than in this nice snug bed, next to a man who thought she was unbelievable-in-a-good-way. She yawned, and leaned in tighter to Gold on instinct as he brought one arm around her to pull her in close. She felt him press a soft, tender kiss into her bird’s nest of hair as she curled up against his chest, and in spite of herself, she smiled at the action.

_You’re in too deep, Lacey_ , said the sensible part of her mind. _It will only end it tears._

Lacey ignored the voice. It had been so long since she had felt this good, this loved, this special, and she wanted to hold onto the feeling for a little while longer.

She could always leave in the morning.

X

It was rare for Lacey to wake up snuggling with someone. She was not a snuggly person and she certainly wasn’t one of those to whom the stereotype of ‘women need cuddling after sex’ could be applied. But here she was, cuddled up against Gold, her nose practically burrowed into his breastbone, and she felt absolutely no desire to move.

She really ought to. She had been telling herself that ever since she had made the decision to come up to Gold’s room with him, and she had continued to tell herself that long after he had fallen asleep with his arms enveloping her and his legs entangled with hers. All the same, her little sensible voice had had to concede that this was what she wanted, and that was why it was so hard for her to move and leave it. She always went after what she wanted, and she had wanted to wake up with Gold.

_All right, wish fulfilled, you’ve woken up with him, now leave._

Lacey shook her head and remained in bed. Sadly, her bladder was siding with her brain and reminding her just how much wine she’d had to drink the previous evening. She groaned and set about the rather difficult processes of working out which limbs were hers and which were Gold’s, and extricating the ones that were hers from the knot that they had fallen into during the night. Finally untangled, she dragged herself out of bed to go for a wee.

Gold’s clothes from yesterday were still in a heap on the bathroom floor. Lacey prodded his jeans with her toe and gave a self-satisfied little grin on seeing her underwear peeping out of his back pocket. She considered fishing them out and putting them on again, but something made her decide against it. Probably the same something that was telling her that the tile floor was very cold under her feet and the best thing to do would be to get back into bed and let Gold warm her up again. She hopped from foot to foot as she washed her hands, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the sink as she did so.

She didn’t look like her normal self. Her hair was flat and sticking out at all angles where she’d slept with it damp and unbrushed, and her face was free from make-up. She wondered if Gold would still find her so attractive when he saw her like this in the bright light of day, rather than the darkness of the night, and she gave a shiver unrelated to the freezing floor under her bare toes. Lacey preferred night, she always had done. She liked the depth that darkness could add to any illusion. It was easier to hide at night, easier to run away from responsibility and hide in the shadows until everything was back on an even keel.

It was harder to run away in the daytime. She should have left whilst it was still dark, whilst the night could cover her tracks.

She stood in the bathroom doorway for a while, considering her options. Gold had not moved since she left him, his arm curled around a bed partner who wasn’t there. As much as she did not want to leave, Lacey was now very much awake, and restless into the bargain. She wandered into the bedroom, meandering over to Gold’s cases in the corner. In the warm morning light that forced its way through the cheap curtains with very little effort, she could see the documents on the little table in the corner. Passport, plane tickets for a flight leaving at six o’clock that evening, various important looking papers with a Storybrooke University letterhead. She had the strangest childish urge to flick through his passport and compare his travels with her own, and take a look at his photo. She picked it up and leafed through the pages carefully, not wanting to make too much noise. Lots of trips to Italy and Greece, for work she imagined. Two trips to New York, and one to Australia. He’d gone further afield than she had, that was for sure. She skipped to the back and looked at his photo. It wasn’t bad; but he did look very different on the picture, a lot younger. His passport was only seven months from renewal, so that wasn’t exactly unreasonable.

She looked at his first name, the name he hated and wouldn’t tell her, and gave a snort of laughter. It wasn’t that bad. She didn’t know what he was so worried about. She heard Gold shift at the sound and glanced over her shoulder; he stirred but didn’t wake, turning over onto his back with a soft sigh.

Lacey perched on the edge of the chair in the room and immediately gave a wry smile at her position, so poised and prim and proper but for her nudity. She could have been a life model; apparently the pay was quite good for an hour standing in one position with no clothes on, and it wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to being naked in front of an audience thanks to her previous line of work.

Her mind came full circle back to her dark train of thought from the previous evening, and Lacey suddenly felt the irrepressible urge for a little modesty, but then Gold shifted and stirred again, his eyes finally fluttering open before she had chance to get dressed. She drew her knees up to her chest, ankles crossed and toes curled over the edge of the chair, effectively blocking all her private bits from his view.

“Morning.” Gold yawned and lazily turned his head on one side, looking at her odd curled up position. “Are you comfortable like that?” Lacey didn’t respond. “Don’t you want to get back into bed?”

That was the trouble, Lacey thought. She did want to get back into bed. There was nothing she wanted more than that. If she didn’t want to get back into bed, she wouldn’t still be here. When she had first got out of bed a few minutes ago, she had toyed with the idea of slipping away without leaving a trace, but that sensible thought had been very quickly squashed and put away in a far corner of her mind, not to be consulted again. What reason could there possibly be for her staying other than getting back into bed? His voice was so incredibly tempting, and she knew that he was not inviting her back into his bed for another long snooze.

Just as he had done last night, Gold was offering what she wanted, and Lacey hated to turn her back on something she wanted.

She uncurled herself and stood, allowing herself a moment to bask in his appreciation of her body before going over to rummage in her handbag, and she held up the condom wrapper. Gold gave her a narrow-eyed grin; Lacey took it between her teeth and yanked the covers off the bed, revealing him half hard already, and she quirked one eyebrow.

“You minx,” Gold growled, beckoning to her to come closer. Lacey obliged, crawling up the bed to straddle him, her hands pinning his shoulders to the mattress as she rubbed her cleft along his length, feeling his cock beneath her twitching against her pussy. Gold gave another rough growl, running his hands up her sides and over her breasts to cup her face. He took the foil from her mouth and set it to one side before pulling her down for a kiss, long and deep and eager. Lacey accepted him wholeheartedly, carding her fingers into his hair and feeling the loss of his lips against hers when he shifted his ministrations to her neck, one hand meandering down to paint lazy circles over her skin, finally coming to rest on her bottom. Lacey continued to press her pelvis into Gold’s, not quite able to get friction just where she wanted it but still too muddled to try and do anything about it. The pleasurable teasing was making her blood warm and her skin tingle, and she wanted to take her time for once in her life.

It took some fumbling between them to get the condom on, their efforts punctuated with kisses and soft laughter. Finally Lacey raised herself up on her hands and knees, bottom up, as Gold took his cock in one hand and parted her folds with the other, sweeping the head through the moisture there before positioning himself at her entrance.

“Ok?” he asked, but Lacey barely let him get the second syllable out, pressing her mouth to his in a fierce, bruising kiss. Her hand closed over his on his cock to keep him still, and she lowered herself onto his shaft achingly slowly, revelling in the feeling of being filled and stretched until he was buried in her to the hilt, and Lacey felt his pubic hair tickling her clit.

Something told her that it would be a good idea to move, but the rest of her wanted to stay like this for a while.

Lacey rocked her hips experimentally, feeling an electric jolt spark through her pussy from her clit, and Gold gave a guttural groan, sliding his arms around her back to pull her in for another kiss, holding her close against his chest like a blanket as he trailed butterfly kisses over her chin and jaw. This, Lacey, thought, was not sex, not in the sense that she was used to it at least. This was making love, something that she had not done for a very long time. As she threw her head back, she wondered idly if she had ever made love like this. She tried to think of an occasion, but quickly gave up as the pleasure overtook everything else and she came, muffling her pathetic moan in Gold’s neck, not wanting to let go. He followed her only a moment later; she felt him still within her fluttering walls and heard his panting in her ear. At length he gave her temple a clumsy kiss, and Lacey raised her hips to allow him to slip out of her.

She stayed collapsed on his chest, lazing happily in a half-doze, focussing only on the here and now. Fuck the voices in her head telling her this was all a very bad idea. Of course it was a very bad idea, but when it came to having bad ideas, Lacey was the queen of illogical decisions and notions doomed to failure. It was only fitting that this streak of fortune be extended to her sex life as well.

Presently, Gold’s fingertips dragged down Lacey’s spine.

“I need to get up,” he said.

“Your plane doesn’t leave for ages,” Lacey said, readjusting her position and pillowing her head below his collarbone.

“I know. I need to get my kit from Tink though. Her plane leaves in four hours and she’ll be busting the door down soon if I don’t go and retrieve my stuff.”

He rubbed her shoulder to try and get her to move, and Lacey stayed very firmly put. “Please, Lacey.”

His words were half a sigh, almost exasperated. _Why can’t you take this seriously_ , he seemed to be saying. The thought rankled in Lacey’s mind, putting her in her place more effectively and brutally than any direct words could have done. Gold was a scientist, an academic, practically a professor even if he hadn’t actually got a chair yet. He had far more important things to do than play hooky with dropouts like Lacey. She’d been good for a night, for a bit of fun, for a good time, but now it was the morning and the scientist was back. Lacey had been a wonderful distraction for a few hours but now, in daylight, she was just that: a distraction from his more important life.

She moved off him, pulling the sheets up over her chest, suddenly feeling exposed, and rolled over to face the wall.

“Thanks love.”

Lacey didn’t respond, focussing on the line on the wall where two sheets of wallpaper didn’t quite meet.

_You knew this was going to happen_ , the shrill, mean voice in her head said. _You knew this was going to happen and still you let yourself get all silly and soft and cuddly. You can’t afford cuddles in your walk of life, Lacey, you know that. You made your own bed and now you’re lying in it, girl._

She heard Gold moving around the room, disposing of the condom and pulling on yesterday’s clothes, and a few moments later she felt his warm hand on her shoulder and his lips soft against her temple.

“It’ll only take five minutes, and I’ll be back.”

Lacey waited until she heard the door close before she moved, sitting up against the headboard and hugging her knees through the covers, resting her chin on them. She looked around the empty room. This was it, her last chance to leave on her own terms, to leave and still be in control. Part of her considered leaving Gold her phone number. The other part, the snide, sensible part that she’d been happily ignoring for the last few hours, told her that this was a bad idea.

_It will only end badly_ , the voice said cruelly. _It always does. He’s too good for you, he doesn’t want some stupid tart who can’t keep her knickers on. University professors don’t go out with part time strippers, however much you might want them to._

Throughout her dating life, Lacey had never been dumped. She had always been the one to break things off whenever they looked like they were getting serious and the possibility of being hurt was just around the corner. This one-night stand was just that – a one-night stand. She could not allow herself to want it to be serious. Gold knew that they would only have one night. He only wanted one night, didn’t he? Surely he would have approached her earlier if he’d wanted more. He only wanted one night and Lacey was only wasting her time and her energy wanting more. She’d only get hurt if she stuck around, and she would never let herself get hurt. It was the only way to prevent the messiness of a broken heart. She had been foolish to stay so long. There had been so many points throughout the night at which she could have left, and she should have taken one of them.

Lacey grabbed her pile of clothes and handbag and ran from the room before she could second guess herself, streaking naked along the corridor to the stairwell. It was only once she was halfway down the steps towards reception that she remembered her clothes were in her arms rather than on her body and she stopped, pulling on her skirt and top and throwing her bra into her handbag before jamming her shoes on her feet. She’d left her knickers behind, still in the pocket of Gold’s jeans, but that wasn’t exactly a problem. She could live without a pair of knickers for a couple of hours.

She brought her hand up to the hollow of her throat and froze on finding it unadorned.

Her locket. She’d left her locket in Gold’s room. She’d left in on the nightstand, next to his specs.

_Mum…_

Lacey pressed her hand over her mouth to stop her little moan of anguish escaping. She could not go back. She had run out of that room and Gold would be back any moment. She could not and would not go back with her tail between her legs and ask for her locket back. She had drawn a line and moved on. She had to accept that despite being only a few yards away, her locket was lost to her forever. Her locket with her mother’s picture.

Her mother was one person whom Lacey had not let go of. Lacey had figured that if there was one person in the world who would not hurt her again, it was someone who was already dead and could not come back. Lacey screwed her eyes up against the prickle of unshed tears. She had been wrong.

She took a deep breath. It was only a necklace, for crying out loud. It wasn’t as if no other photos of her mother existed.

But that was the only photo that Lacey had had. To get more would mean going home, to her family and all the other people she had pushed away for fear of getting hurt.

Lacey shook herself. It was only a necklace and since there was no going back, she was going to have to go on. No time for sentiment and no time for crying over lost jewellery. She remembered when she’d been ten years old, just before her mum first got sick, and she was crying over some lost trinket. What had her mum said?

_It’s ok to cry, Lace. Even big girls cry sometimes._

Lacey had only ever seen her mother cry once. She’d always stayed so brave, but when they said that the cancer was back and this time there was nothing they could do…

Lacey never let anyone see her cry, but even big girls cried sometimes. She picked up her handbag and made her way calmly down the rest of the staircase and into the ladies’ bathroom, locking herself in the furthest cubicle and sitting down on the closed toilet lid before bursting into shaking, silent sobs. She’d let herself cry now, get it all out of her system, and then she’d get on with life.

Lacey didn’t know how long she sat there, until she quietened and stopped sniffling, but she was happy to remain in her safe little cocoon, where no-one would bother her for the foreseeable future until she got herself a new plan. Maybe she should go back to Venice; the club owner wouldn’t be sorry to see her back on the stage. Maybe…

Her phone began to ring. Lacey ignored it. She probably didn’t have enough to get to Venice; she’d have to stay in Rome a while to source some income for the next leg of her journey and by that point she might as well keep moving forward. Constantly moving forward meant less chance of looking back. Lacey was not one for regrets and lamenting missed opportunities.

Her phone was still ringing persistently and Lacey pulled it out, more out of annoyance than any real desire to answer, and she looked at the caller ID, immediately sighing because really, she should have known.

_Belle_

Her sister had always had impeccable timing. No matter how much Lacey tried to push her away, Belle always pushed back, refusing to be cold-shouldered. Her persistence exasperated Lacey. No matter how badly she behaved, no matter what she did to try and shock her away, Belle was always there, the protective older sister making sure she was all right. Lacey had to give a snort of laughter at the thought. Belle was the younger twin, by all of seven minutes, and she had always been the smaller, the weaker. Lacey had always been strong, and yet Belle was the one who looked out for her.

The phone continued to ring. Lacey considered ignoring it. She’d done it before, after all. Many times. She really only talked to her sister if she was bored. Or if Belle rang whilst Lacey was having sex, in which case Lacey would always answer to try and put her off calling again.

But today Lacey was not feeling her usual self and she needed to take her mind off her locket, so she answered.

“Lacey French, wanton sex goddess, very thoroughly fucked and currently wearing a sinfully short skirt with no panties. How can I help, dearest sister?”

“Hi Lace,” was Belle’s reply. “Don’t suppose you’re coming home for Dad’s birthday on Wednesday?”

Lacey snorted.

“Dad currently thinks I’m whoring my way down the Venetian canals and I’d rather not disturb that lovely image for him.”

Belle sighed on the other end of the phone.

“Lacey, don’t be like that.”

“Don’t be like what?”

“Lace, having a lot of sex doesn’t make you a hooker.”

“Everyone else seems to think it does, and I’d hate to shatter their illusions. I quite like being the evil twin. It would be terrible if people thought I was respectable.”

“Lacey, you are utterly impossible.”

Lacey didn’t reply. They had this discussion every time that Belle rang up to ask if she was coming home for some kind of social event, be it a family birthday, Christmas, or anything else in between that Lacey had been half invited to by proxy. When distant relatives asked their father ‘will the girls be coming, Moe?’ what they really meant was ‘will Belle be coming?’

Lacey hadn’t been home in six years and yet Belle still asked her. Every damn time. She really should have got the picture by now.

She changed the subject.

“How’s life back at the convent, Sister Isabelle?”

Lacey had always said that Belle was a nun in comparison to her, even before she had left home, and the origins of the joke had been lost to the annals of time.

“Great thanks. Sister Evangeline started running around with a lampshade on her head scaring the monks next door. How’s Rome?”

That was the thing about Belle. More often than not, she gave as good as she got.

“Rome’s lovely. Full of culture I haven’t seen.” She paused, then without thinking blurted out her next words. “I lost my locket.”

“Oh no… I’m so sorry, sis.”

Belle was genuinely sympathetic to her loss. Lacey felt something inside her twist. It wasn’t a good feeling.

“Why?” she asked flippantly. “It’s only a locket. Not even worth that much.”

“I know how much it meant to you though.”

“It was just a trinket.” She pressed on, kicking herself for having mentioned it in the first place and brought it to the forefront of her mind again. “I picked up a guy I’ve had my eye on for a while last night. Professor from Storybrooke University. Isn’t that where you’re going for your PhD?” Lacey didn’t pause for an affirmative answer, the very fact that her sister was doing a PhD was not one that she wanted to dwell on. “Well, let me tell you, the faculty are thorough. Came three times in as many hours, and again this morning.”

“Good for you.” Belle’s voice was dry. “What’s his name?”

_Gold_ , Lacey thought. _Raymond Gold. And he hates that name, and I only found it out because I looked at his passport. His name is Gold._

“Who cares?” she said. “He’s a professor.”

“So you know he’s a professor but you don’t know his name.” Lacey could hear the amusement in Belle’s voice and she gave a huffed breath.

“What does it matter to you?” she asked her sister. “Since when have you been so interested in my lovelife?”

“Because there’s something different about this one, Lace. I can hear it in your voice. There’s something special about this professor.”

Lacey blinked. Belle had always been intuitive, but that was a new level of freakish telepathy.

“He’s just another guy,” she said, trying to convince herself that it was true. “He’s just another guy, Belle, he’s no-one special.”

Except he was. If he was just another guy she wouldn’t have gone back to his room. She wouldn’t have taken him up on his invitation. She wouldn’t have let him see her naked, or let herself sleep snuggled up with him, and she wouldn’t have made love with him.

“Lacey, I know that he’s special to you. You’re still talking about him in the present tense.”

Belle’s voice was so soft and sympathetic, but the words were harsh and jarring in their truth. Lacey didn’t say anything in response.

“Lace?”

Her sister sounded very far away all of a sudden. Lacey took a deep breath.

“It was only a one night stand, he’s flying back to England today,” she said quickly. “One night only. Never going to see him again so no use crying over spilt milk.”

“You’ve got a phone, Lacey. There’s no harm in seeing where it goes if you’re interested.”

_But there is, dearest sister_ , said the snide part of Lacey’s brain.

“He’s a professor and I’m, well, we all know what I am. We were doomed from the start,” she said with a brightness she did not feel. “I know you’re desperate for me to settle down and start being good but sadly this was not the correct opportunity.”

“And when will it be?” There was the faintest hint of exasperation in Belle’s voice. It was an argument that they had often, and Lacey already knew the way that it would end. “When are you going to actually keep a man you like?”

“I am who I am, Belle, and who I am is not you! I am not you, Belle! I am not a frigid little convent girl who’s going to settle down with a husband and two kids and the whole white picket fence charade and a stomach full of bleach when the tedium of perfection gets to be too much! I am not you!”

“What you are, Lacey, is unhappy.”

Lacey stopped her tirade short. That was not normally Belle’s response when Lacey ‘got shouty’ as their father had so often put it.

“Pardon?” she choked.

“You’re unhappy. You’ve finally found someone you want more from and you’re refusing to let yourself go after it, and it’s made you unhappy.”

“I am not unhappy,” Lacey ground out. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“There is no shame in wanting more from someone, Lacey.”

“Shut up.” She should put the phone down. She should terminate the conversation without further ado or deliberation to stop it veering into territory that she desperately did not want to venture into.

“There is no shame in wanting everything from someone.”

“Shut up!” Lacey closed her eyes and rested her head on her knees. She felt dizzy all of a sudden.

“Why?” Belle asked. “I know you like him, Lacey, I know you want more, and you’ll never get more if you don’t go after it.”

“Shut the hell up! Fine, I like him, I like him a lot, and he likes me, and yes, I want more, but I can’t have it so just shut up and stop telling me how to live my life! If I want more but don’t go after it then it’s my choice, and if it makes me unhappy then it’s my decision. I control my own fucking life, Belle!”

“I just don’t want you to be unhappy.”

“I don’t care what you want!” Lacey screamed down the phone.

There was a long silence.

“You have got to stop this, Lacey.” For the first time since Lacey had left home and they had begun this method of communication, Belle sounded incredibly upset. “You have got to stop pushing everyone you like and everyone who cares about you away.”

“I don’t need anyone to care about me!” Lacey yelled. “I don’t want anyone to care about me!”

“You don’t want anyone to care about you.” Belle’s voice was flat. “You don’t want anyone to make sure you’re ok. You don’t want anyone to love you.”

“No! I don’t! I don’t want any of that! Because when people care about you, all they ever do is hurt you! They leave, or they die, like Mum did! I hate having people care about me because it means I care about them too, and then what happens when they fuck me over?”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“I care about you, Lacey.” Belle’s words were choked and Lacey knew that she was crying. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

“I know you do,” she said quietly. “I think that might be why I hate you.”

There was another long silence. Lacey was on the verge of hanging up, but then Belle spoke again.

“What happens when you need someone? What happens when you need a friend to turn to and there’s no-one there because you pushed away everyone who cared about you and wanted to make sure that you were all right?”

“I haven’t needed anyone for six years, Belle. I won’t need anyone in the future.”

“I hope you’re right, Lacey French.”

The phone went dead and Lacey threw it into her handbag. She sighed and leaned her head against the cubicle wall, scrubbing her eyes frantically. Why was she crying, for goodness’ sake? Wasn’t this what she’d been trying to do for years? To get rid of Belle’s presence watching over her shoulder all the time? Why was she so miserable about finally succeeding in pushing her sister away? She was free now. No-one tying her down or holding her back. She could do whatever she wanted.

Unconsciously, Lacey touched her décolletage again, still missing the locket there. Mum and sister all gone in one day. Still, it made sense to make a clean break. She left the cubicle and stared at her red, blotchy face in the mirror. She looked absolutely frightful.

“Are you all right, love?”

Lacey glanced sideways at the other woman who had just come into the bathroom. It was the other archaeologist, Tink, Gold had said her name was, surrounded by cases and metal airline trunks.

“I’m fine.”

“You sure, pet? If Gold hurt you I’ll gladly take his balls off for you. Plenty of sharp archaeology tools right here.”

Lacey shook her head.

“No, Gold was a perfect gentleman.” _I’m the one who’s doing the hurting_ , she thought sourly. _At least it’s better than being hurt, right?_

Tink gave her a sad smile but didn’t push the point, disappearing into the cubicle that Lacey had just vacated. Lacey shook herself.

Time to move on.

The small, frightened part of herself that she always kept firmly under wraps was shaking its cage, demanding to be let out, begging her to call Belle back. _I’m so sorry Belle I didn’t mean it I don’t hate you please don’t stop calling me out of the blue to check I’m still alive._

She left the bathroom.

Time to move on.

X

Gold wasn’t sure why he was surprised when he returned to his room, kit in hand, to find Lacey vanished without trace, and he wasn’t sure why he was so saddened to see her gone. He was too old for her, a crusty academic better suited to the company of his antiquities. She was bright and beautiful and full of life and danger, a far off firework exploding against the monotonous backdrop of his life. Delicious and destructive and far too good for him. A woman like Lacey needed excitement. Gold was a lot of things but exciting was not one of them.

It had been good whilst it lasted, but now it was over. Gold dumped his kit in the corner by his suitcase and lay back against the pillows with a sigh. He had seen the person underneath. He had seen flashes of the wandering, lonely young woman that Lacey really was underneath, and he’d been a romantic old fool enough to think that maybe there could have been more between them. He remembered the way she had curled up against him during the night, snuggling into his chest like a scared little kitten. It had been a long time since Gold had shared a bed for longer than it took to do the deed. He had forgotten how much he liked having a sleeping partner.

He took off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose, tossing them onto the nightstand. _Face it, Gold, you’re you and she’s… Lacey._ At least he had the small comfort that he had not disgraced himself completely with her, even if he did say so himself. He lay there for a while before grudgingly admitting that feeling sorry for himself was not going to get him anywhere. He had packing to do.

Contact lenses in and fresh clothes on, Gold picked up his specs to pack them and his brow furrowed when he saw them catch on something. Further inspection revealed it to be Lacey’s locket. For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of hope, his heart pounding almost painfully in his chest. Would she come back for it? Should he go after her?

It was clear from the haste and absoluteness of her departure that she did not want to see him again so trying to follow her would probably not be a wise move. A sensible man might hand the necklace into the hotel reception in case she asked there for it. It would be easy enough for him not to have noticed its presence and for the chambermaids to find it when they cleared the room.

Gold put the necklace into his inside pocket. If she wanted it, she could come back for it. If not, then, at least he had something to remember her by. He cast his mind back to the night before, to the moment when he had seen her properly for the first time, with his specs on, lying on his bed completely naked, just swathes of soft, flawless skin on show. Her skin was so pale and silvered in the moonlight, it almost glowed with something ethereal, and he could see under her hard, challenging, exterior to the woman within. A delicate faery in a sordid world.

A brief flicker of light in an ocean of darkness.


	2. Part Two - Storybrooke to Rome

There were some days (scratch that, several days), when Gold hated teaching. He was fairly certain that the entirety of all his classes were idiots of the highest order and at that particular moment in time, nothing was going to change his opinion. When he left the lecture theatre, still muttering under his breath about why some people bothered turning up to lectures if they hadn't done their reading and if all they were going to do in the class was fall asleep, Tink was waiting for him. After a couple of weeks' 'holiday' back home in Australia, she had returned to Storybrooke to continue working with him on the data that they had uncovered during the Rome trip. She was leaning on the wall, a wry smile on her face as she watched the students file out of the auditorium and Gold storm out after them.

"Good class?" she asked lightly. Gold just looked at her. "I heard you yelling halfway down the corridor," she added.

"They're a bunch of halfwits," Gold growled. "Why do I do this again?"

"Because you secretly love teaching?" Tink suggested with a grin. Gold snorted. "All right, bad example. Maybe it's because the university will cut your funding if you don't."

"That's probably the reason," Gold muttered. "I swear, one of these days..."

He didn't carry on with the threat, he never did, usually because he was always in too much of a bad mood to try and think up something suitably inventive. It was just left hanging in the air, dangling ominously over the heads of his students.

"Oh come on, they can't be that bad," Tink said.

Gold raised one eyebrow. "I just had one student tell me that Athena was the goddess of love and beauty."

"Well..." Tink tailed off, trying to find a positive side and failing. "Ok, not knowing your gods and goddesses at university level is a bit embarrassing," she conceded, before steering him in the direction of the doors out of the archaeology building. "Come on, I need coffee if we're going to start working, you kept me up half the night last time. Mind you, the smell of lanolin in your lab kept me awake. How can you stand that stuff?"

"Practice," Gold said, but then he tailed off as they reached the exit and stepped out into the warm September air. He blinked. There, across the road, standing on the steps of the physics building, was Lacey. He almost hadn't recognised her, dressed in a demure blue sundress with her hair braided down her back. He blinked but no, she was still there, rummaging through her handbag and paying him no mind whatsoever. What was Lacey doing in Storybrooke?

"Lacey?"

"Huh?" Beside him, Tink looked up from her phone. "Gold, are you all right?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. Give me a minute."

He wasn't quite sure what possessed him to cross the road to speak to her, probably the same force that had possessed him to go and speak to her in the bar those few weeks ago. Fate had brought them together again, and it seemed rude to ignore her calling.

She didn't look up as he approached, and this puzzled Gold.

"Lacey?"

She finally looked up at him, complete blank incomprehension in her face.

"Sorry, do I know you?"

Gold stopped short. There was absolutely no recognition in her eyes whatsoever, and he was beginning to think that he had perhaps made a mistake.

"It's me," he said eventually, slightly faltering. "Gold."

Lacey blinked, completely uncomprehending. "Nice to meet you," she said warily. "Can I help you?"

"Lacey?" Gold tried again.

"Ah." There was some understanding in her face now. "Ah. I see the confusion. I'm not Lacey. I know I look like her, but I'm not her. Sorry. I'm her twin sister, Belle."

"Oh." Gold was completely thrown by this admission. He had not even known that Lacey had a sister, let alone an identical twin. "I'm sorry, I..." He floundered for words. Belle quirked one eyebrow, waiting for him to continue, and Gold received the distinct feeling that her initial impression of him was not a good one. He wasn't sure how to continue. _Sorry I mistook you for your sister, only she left without saying goodbye - without saying anything - and I wanted the chance to talk to her._ That was never going to fly. "How is Lacey?" he finished weakly. "She left in rather a hurry."

Belle's mouth set in a firm line.

"Well, that was probably because she didn't want to see you again," she said. "If there is one thing that can be said of my sister, it's that she doesn't hang around if she doesn't want to. And to answer your question, I don't know how she is, I haven't spoken to her for three weeks, and I really don't think it's appropriate for us to be discussing her considering that we are complete strangers. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting to get to."

Gold let her go, completely clueless as to where to go from there and helplessly aware that he had just made himself an enemy. A thought struck him.

"Wait, Belle," he said, coming up the steps of the physics building after her.

Belle turned, her expression hard and unforgiving.

"Yes?"

"I have something that belongs to your sister," Gold began. "She left it behind in my hotel room and I think you're more likely to see her than I am. I won't bother you again, I promise."

He fished out his wallet and Belle regarded him with an expression of horror and disgust.

"I don't know what kind of arrangement you had with my sister but I can assure you that I don't want your money for services rendered," she spat.

"It's not, I mean, I'm not, Lacey isn't, she wasn't..." Gold held up Lacey's locket that he had kept for the past few weeks on the off chance of seeing Lacey again to return it, the vague flicker of hope in his heart that he might meet her once more refusing to die fully.

Immediately, Belle's demeanour changed, her hands flying to her mouth.

"She told me she'd lost it," she murmured. "She was trying so hard to pretend it didn't matter but I could tell how distraught she was."

She came over and took the locket from him, turning it over and over between her fingers before finally clasping it around her own neck. "I don't know that I'm more likely to see her than you, but thank you." She paused. "You must be the professor. She told me about you."

"Doctor," Gold corrected, just as he had done with Lacey that night. "I'm still not a professor yet. But yes, I am probably that person."

There was silence for a few moments.

"Thank you," Belle said again, touching the pendant. "I'm sorry, we got off on the wrong foot." She held out her hand. "Belle French, pleased to meet you."

"Gold." He shook her hand, still perplexed by what had just happened. "Don't worry about it. I suspect you must get mistaken for each other a lot."

Belle nodded. "You have no idea. I really do have a meeting to get to, but thank you again!"

She took off up the stairs and vanished into the physics building. Gold stood staring after her for a long time.

"Ok, what just happened?" Tink asked, coming up beside him. "Is there a reason you're chasing after the physics PhD students all of a sudden?"

"Yes... No... Never mind."

Still reeling from his meeting with Belle, Gold let Tink steer him away in the direction of the coffee shop, and he wondered where Lacey could be.

X

Belle walked into the physics building in something of a daze, not really sure if she could believe what had just happened to her. No contact with Lacey for three weeks, and then suddenly the professor had appeared, out of the blue. She shouldn't have been surprised, really. Lacey had said that he was from Storybrooke and that he was going back there on the morning that they had last spoken. It really shouldn't have come as a shock to her that not only was he there, he had also mistaken her for her sister. Still, she couldn't help but wonder. Maybe if she could just persuade Lacey to come and visit her, a brief flying visit to say hello to her twin, and maybe she could wrangle another meeting between the two of them. Lacey's mantra had always been to keep pushing forward and never look back. Belle was not sure how much she subscribed to that theory herself, but she understood Lacey's preoccupation with it. Belle was fairly certain that of all the people Lacey had met and liked over the past few years, she had not seen any of them a second time. Perhaps if fate intervened - with a little help from Belle - Lacey's attitude might change.

Belle sighed. It was not that she was so desperate for her sister to settle down and 'be good'. She would not change Lacey for the world, anyone less exuberant, less full of life and less able to get into quite so much trouble would not be the sister she knew and loved. She just wished that Lacey could see how unhappy her lifestyle made her. Belle had heard it in her sister's too-bright voice when she had called that last time - this was one man that she was not happy to be leaving, a man that she wanted to have had more time with. It was the first time that she'd ever heard Lacey quite so cut up about a missed opportunity. Oh, she'd flippantly lamented the loss of particularly talented bed partners before, but this was something different. It was clear that Lacey wanted so much more from him. But Lacey being Lacey, she wouldn't make that time, wouldn't take a chance on happiness.

Rounding the corner towards her supervisor's office, Belle pondered Gold's feelings towards her sister. He had seemed incredibly startled to see her, but he had wanted to see her, he had approached her thinking she was Lacey, rather than politely ignoring her presence or awkwardly turning away, ashamed and unwilling to face the young woman he had enjoyed a heady night of pleasure with. If he had really only wanted that one night, then surely he would not have approached her so eagerly, and would not have been quite so disappointed when Belle's true identity had been revealed. He had been carrying her pendant around for three weeks, after all. Belle didn't think that he would have done that had he been any less attached than Lacey seemed to be. Why had he kept it? A memento of the too-brief time they'd had together, or perhaps the hope of being able to return it person?

Belle gave another long sigh and tried to shake the thoughts from her head, focussing on the present rather than the hypothetical musings of the past. She had not been able to concentrate at all for the last three weeks, ever since that last conversation with Lacey, and her supervisor had noticed her abstraction. To say that he was unhappy about it would be putting it mildly - she was only two months into her study and she was already behind in her research. Still, Belle had more pressing concerns, the constant dilemma in the forefront of her mind being not one of letters and numbers on the dry wipe board but that of Lacey, and whether to call her or not.

On the one hand, Belle had got used to calling her sister on a semi-regular basis, to reassure herself she was alive rather than for any kind of happy conversation. Since Lacey would never take the initiative (or was perhaps actively avoiding the responsibility) to check in at any kind of interval, it was up to Belle to proactively contact her if she wanted any kind of assurance of her continued survival, even if the response she received from Lacey for her efforts was less than favourable. On the other hand, if there was one personality trait that Belle shared with her sister, it was stubbornness. If they had a fight, neither of them would back down from what they thought was right. Arguments between them had been known to go on for weeks until someone provided irrefutable proof in favour of one side or the other, and even then the tensions could continue to simmer for a good couple of months before the original point of the disagreement was lost to the ether. In this case, Belle would not give in and call her sister. This time, she had had enough of being pushed away. If Lacey wanted to talk to her, then Lacey could call her, and save Belle's long-distance phone bill into the bargain. On yet another hand, Belle could not help but feel a slight twinge of guilt every time she looked at her phone and found herself wanting to talk to Lacey but pointedly not doing so. One of them had to be the responsible one, after all, and that task had always fallen to Belle in the past, so it made sense for her to take it on again. Belle shook herself crossly. For crying out loud, Lacey was twenty-six and admirably capable of taking care of herself, let her take responsibility for herself for once in her life, instead of having Belle constantly hovering around waiting to pick up the pieces from the inevitable fallout from whatever ludicrous situation Lacey had got herself into this time.

Still angry, frustrated and confused, Belle knocked on Rush's door. There was no response for a few moments, and then a distracted voice bade her enter. Belle did so, putting her paperwork down on the desk and settling herself in the other chair. Rush didn't look up straight away, still absorbed in whatever it was that he was doing, so Belle took the opportunity to study her supervisor a little more closely. She could not deny that she found him really rather aesthetically pleasing, even if his demeanour left rather a lot to be desired most of the time. As the first few weeks had passed and Belle had become a little more used to his idiosyncrasies, she found him less and less maddening, and she could understand his thought patterns a little better now.

His notes were completely illegible and most of the time looked like he'd been side-tracked and branched off into a completely new equation halfway through trying to solve something, and only returning to the original problem at hand via the most circuitous route known to man.

Finally Rush deigned to grace her with his mental presence.

"Have you finished your collation yet?" he asked. Belle grimaced and shook her head. "You said you'd be finished this week," Rush pointed out. "You can't do anything with data that you don't have, Belle. What's happened this time?"

"Nothing, I'm just having trouble concentrating at the moment."

"You're not an undergrad anymore," Rush snapped. "If you're going to get through this thesis you need discipline."

Belle could feel herself prickling with anger. "I've only just started," she replied, trying to keep her voice level.

"Aye, and you start as you mean to go on," Rush said. "Writing a thesis is fucking hard work, are you sure you're ready for it?"

"I knew what I was getting into." Belle's voice was clipped. "I'm perfectly capable of hard work, thank you very much, I just have other things on my mind right now." Belle wondered if Rush's mind ever wandered. He wore a wedding ring but she knew from the whisperings amongst her fellow PhD students that there was no longer a wife in the picture, and it was at times like this that she couldn't blame the poor woman for leaving him. "I'm worried about my sister."

"How fascinating," Rush said flatly. "When are you not worried about your sister? I don't care about your personal problems, Belle, they are none of my concern, so can we focus on the task at hand now?" He jabbed her papers angrily. "Thank you."

Belle sighed. It was a shame that she and Rush normally got on quite well because if there was anyone in the world who she'd want to help her bury a body, apart from Lacey, it would be him, even though the majority of the faculty wouldn't trust him as far as they could spit. If she killed him, as she had frequently wanted to do of late, he would not be there to cover her tracks. By the end of the meeting she had managed to hold her own in the mathematical battlefield, and since all thoughts of Lacey and her situation had been kept firmly out of sight and mind, Rush was in a marginally better mood than when she had arrived in his office. Belle was a little calmer, and accepted Rush's gruff apology for his earlier words as she left the room. The trouble was, despite only knowing each other a couple of months, they understood each other more than they would like to admit. There was a grudging respect in there somewhere, even if Belle was not feeling it at the moment, and she knew deep down that it was reciprocated. Rush would not have agreed to take her on as a PhD student if it was not.

She left the physics building and stepped out into the fresh air once more; September had started balmy this year but a fresh breeze had picked up during her time indoors and she pulled her cardigan around her shoulders as she moved away down the hill, away from the main campus. She paused after only a few steps, looking up at the crumbling old building that housed archaeology and history, seriously considering trying to find Gold again. It made no sense really, it wasn’t as if he was the last person to have had any contact with Lacey, but he was the only person who had had any contact with Lacey whom Belle had actually met, and something made her inexplicably want to compare notes with him. He had come to her asking after Lacey’s well-being, and now she wanted to do the same to him. She already knew that she would not find his response in any way enlightening. Lacey had left him before Belle had called her, so he would not be able to provide any news on her whereabouts or current physical condition, but perhaps he could tell Belle how Lacey had been when he had last seen her. Belle wondered whether his judgment of her behaviour would be any different to her own, whether his impressions matched up with hers.

She shook herself, deciding that it was better to avoid that particular temptation. As rare and exciting as it was to meet someone who had met Lacey, it was probably best to keep it that way, lest Belle hear something about her sister that she did not want to know. She would be the first to admit that Lacey was what some would mildly call ‘trouble’, but Belle would still defend her sister to the bitter end from all comers – even Lacey herself. Belle heard the bitterness in her twin’s voice when she so flippantly called herself a whore, and she wanted so desperately for Lacey to see herself in the same light that Belle saw her. Brave and independent and self-assured, even if completely infuriating the majority of the time.

Yes, it was better this way, easier to keep her distance and wonder and worry about what might have been, rather than trying to make something happen that Lacey was determined should never come to pass.

The thoughts kept Belle occupied all the way back to her flat, and for what felt like the thousandth time, she considered calling Lacey. What would she say though? _Oh, by the way, I’ve met your professor and I’m certain that he feels exactly the same way about you as you do about him, so will you please get your arse back over here and be happy together?_ Not a good idea. Belle shoved her phone down the side of the sofa to avoid temptation and sat down to get to work on her data. As annoying as it was to admit, Rush was right, she was never going to be able to get anywhere if she didn’t get this crucial first step finished, and as much as she was looking forward to writing her thesis, she would not get that far if she was not properly prepared.

She doodled a little pattern of hearts and arrows and flowers over the margin of her notebook as she multiplied and divided and square rooted, finding her thoughts meandering from Lacey and Gold in the direction of the physics building, and one occupant thereof. Belle closed her eyes, the formulae on the page blurring together in front of her as the evening wore on.

_If you’re going to get through this thesis you need discipline_ , his rough brogue echoed in her ears. She was fairly sure that it had not sounded quite as dirty when he had said it as when she remembered it. For the briefest of moments she had a vision of herself leaning over Rush’s desk with her skirt and knickers round her ankles, bare bottom high in the air inviting some kind of punishment, and her eyes shot open. Belle felt her face flame bright red, even though no-one but her had been party to the little fantasy – was it really a fantasy or just a weird perversion?

She rubbed her eyes, pushing all inappropriate thoughts about her supervisor to the back of her mind and firmly putting a lid on them. She was getting tired and she was already permanently distracted by Lacey these days. It was time for bed, and an end to the musings about Rush.

X

There was a horrible screeching sound, the shrill scream of brakes and the deafening noise of a car horn. Lights flashing, sirens wailing, indistinct, fuzzy pictures and the taste of blood in her mouth and crippling pain in her chest...

Belle woke with a start, gasping for breath and still fancying she could smell the horrible metallic tang of blood everywhere. She sat up in bed, pressing the heel of her hand to her cold, clammy forehead. Just a nightmare, she told herself firmly. Nothing to be scared of or worried about. Just a nightmare.

But it had felt so real; it had felt as if she had actually been there, surrounded by the lights and the noise and the pain. She gingerly pressed a hand over her ribcage; there was no pain but a definite soreness, a memory of pain almost. Perhaps she had slept awkwardly and pulled a muscle. Belle shook her head. Her rationalisations were getting her nowhere. She glanced at the alarm clock, it was half-past one. A perfectly plausible time for something to have happened.

_Lacey..._

Something had happened to Lacey. Something bad.

Belle had often scoffed at the idea of twins being linked in some way. It had certainly never happened before, that she and Lacey had any kind of connection. Belle never knew what her sister was thinking and never knew the right time to ring her. She was intuitive, yes, but Belle liked to think that she was intuitive about everyone, not just her twin. She'd never known when Lacey had got herself into trouble before, only when she'd come running into the kitchen with a yell of 'Belle, help!'

But this dream... Belle could not ignore it; it was just enough to put her already tense mind even further on edge. No contact from Lacey for three weeks and now this, it was too much.

Uncaring of the late (or indeed early) hour, Belle rushed into the living room, fished out her phone from the depths of the sofa cushions and hit Lacey's speed dial. Ironic how it was always at the top, even after all these years of Lacey trying so hard to run away, and even after their last conversation ended on such harsh terms.

The phone didn't ring and cut to voicemail immediately. Belle's stomach gave an ominous lurch. Lacey never turned her phone off. She might not answer it very often, and she might pointedly ignore Belle four times out of the five that she rang, but she never, ever turned her phone off. Something was definitely amiss.

She dialled the number again but the same thing happened, and this time Belle left a message.

"Lacey, it's Belle, I know it's the middle of the night but can you call me back as soon as you get this. Please, it's really important, I just want to hear your voice. Please, Lacey."

She had pleaded and begged her sister enough times over the last few years to know that such words rarely got through, but she didn't care; she had to do something, anything in her power, to find out if Lacey was all right. She was too unnerved to let it lie and pretend that nothing had happened, convince herself that everything was going to be all right.

She glanced at the alarm clock again. Less than ten minutes had passed but it felt like an age and then some. There was no way that she was going to get back to sleep again now, so Belle decided that there was nothing to be gained from simply lying in bed. She got up and dressed and opened up her laptop, intending to do some work on her thesis since she had the time to kill, but after writing six words and deleting seven, she knew that she was not going to be able to concentrate on that either.

Perhaps data collation would help; that was something mindless and boring that she never normally liked to do. It would give her something constructive to occupy her hands and mathematical faculties with so that she could still have the majority of her mind free to worry if she so desired. Yes, collating her data would be the best thing to do in these circumstances. She needed to make some progress and catch up unless she wanted another earful from Rush, and she didn't think that he would take too kindly to learn that Lacey was yet again the cause of another wasted day.

The collation was a slow process, made even slower by Belle checking her phone every few minutes to see if Lacey had rung or sent her a message and that she had somehow missed it by accident.

At about six o'clock, the data was done, and on cue, her phone began to ring. Belle snatched it up, and her heart leapt to her mouth. It was not Lacey's number, but it did have the 0039 international code that showed its origin to be Italy.

"Hello?" Belle answered warily.

"Am I speaking to Miss Isabelle French?" The voice was heavily accented and not at all familiar to Belle.

"Yes, who's calling please?"

"My name is Doctor Rossi, I am calling from the Salvator Mundi International Hospital in Rome. Your sister, Miss Lacey French, has been in an accident..."

Belle listened in a stunned silence as the doctor continued to explain what had happened to her sister. Lacey had been in an accident. She'd been hit by a car. Belle refused to believe that it was possible and yet she knew it had to be; the dream had been too scarily vivid. She had never, ever been worried that something like that could happen to someone like Lacey. She had been worried about her sister, certainly. She could not remember a time when she had not been. But something so ordinary as a car accident didn't happen to someone quite so extraordinary as Lacey.

Belle's first instinct was simply to get there by any means necessary. She had to get to Rome. There was no other possible course of action in her mind. For the first few moments after she hung up, she sat staring at her phone, mentally planning her next steps, which equated to one: get to Italy and get to Lacey. She sprang up from the sofa and rushed around her flat in a mad rush, throwing things haphazardly into her overnight bag and searching frantically for her passport. She was almost out of the door before she realised that this madcap hurtling around was not achieving anything of use. This was more how Lacey would react to a crisis. Get there as soon as possible and start trying to make things right, unthinking and uncaring of the consequences. Belle sat down on the floor in the hall with audible bump, clutching her bag to her chest. She didn't even know where her nearest airport was, let alone how to get to it on public transport or whether it flew to Rome. Once she got there, she had no idea where the hospital was or how to get there, nor where on earth she could stay. As much as she might not want to leave Lacey's side, she doubted that the nurses would let her sleep there. Belle let out a long, shaky breath. This wasn't like her, she was careful, she planned in advance and she always knew what she was doing before she did it. Then again, this kind of situation had never happened to Belle before, an emergency of this terrible calibre, and so far away. Her plans and processes had nothing for this kind of contingency.

She needed help. Whilst she and Lacey were both stubborn and independent, a fact that their father had so often lamented, Belle was not above asking for help if she was desperate, and desperate she was at that point in time. She must look a picture, she thought sadly, sitting hugging her bag in the hall, unsure of where to turn. The main problem was, she had no idea who the best person to ask would be. She did not want to tell her dad; his health was already precarious and she did not want to cause him any worry until after she had established Lacey's condition for herself. There was a reason that Belle was Lacey's next-of-kin and not their father.

Who else was there to turn to? She had only just arrived in Storybrooke and did not know anyone well enough to ask for their help in something so momentous, and she certainly didn't think that seeking Rush's assistance would be a good idea.

It struck her then, as she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater. Someone she did not know, but someone who knew Rome, and more importantly, someone who knew Lacey and felt about her similarly to the way Belle did, or at least strongly enough to want to make sure that she was ok.

Gold.

Belle looked at her watch; it was now coming up to seven o'clock and the campus would be opening up ready for faculty breakfast meetings. With any luck she should not have to wait too long to find him. She dragged her travel bag out of the front door and began to make her way up to the campus; still too early yet for any buses to be running. When she arrived, the place was still silent as the grave, only the caretakers and cleaners around, the occasional dead-eyed student coming out of the library. Belle continued on towards the history building and began the unenviable task of trying to find Gold's office. There was no other way for her to find him. All she knew was his name and department; they'd only met the day before and yet Belle still felt like she knew him, if only a little, through Lacey.

He was not in his office, when she knocked on the door marked 'Dr R Gold'. Belle wasn't quite sure why she was so disappointed, or indeed surprised. Maybe she had become so used to Rush keeping odd hours that it seemed unthinkable for other professors not to do the same. She leaned back against the door, sliding down it until she was crouched on the floor, hugging her knees. She closed her eyes, immediately regretting her decision to search him out. What if he wasn't going to come to his office today? Who knew how much time she might waste sitting here waiting for him, time that she should be using to get over to Lacey? She kept telling herself that she couldn't do it alone, she was going to need some help from someone and Gold seemed, by whatever crazy logic, to be the best option at that point in time.

"Belle?"

She looked up to see Gold coming down the corridor towards her, accompanied by a young blonde woman.

"Whatever's the matter?" he asked, crouching down beside her.

"I need your help," Belle began. "It's Lacey..."

"Come on, come in, have a cup of tea."

"I don't have time for a cup of tea!" Belle exclaimed. "I have to go over and see her!"

Gold remained put, offering a hand to help her up that Belle took. "Tea," he repeated, after he had unlocked his office door and gestured for her to enter. "Tell me everything that's happened."

Belle nodded. After all, they barely knew each other and she was begging his help in his office doorway, so an explanation was probably in order. Gold put the kettle on and Belle settled herself in the chair opposite the desk, clutching her bag to her chest like some kind of lifeline linking her to Lacey. As they waited for the water to boil, Belle told her tale. She left out her odd nightmare – even the most accepting of people would have trouble believing that – and started from the phone call.

"And I just thought..." Belle tailed off. "You were the best person to ask. You care about Lacey, I know you do. You wouldn't have kept that locket if you didn't, you'd have handed it in or left it where it was, but you kept it, whether as a memento or in the hope of seeing her again I don't know, but whichever way, you care about her as much as I do."

Gold nodded.

"I'll come with you," he said.

"I didn't mean that," Belle said, "I just need help to get there, to know where I'm going once I get there..." She tailed off again, because as much as she was protesting, the idea of having a friend to hold her together so that she could hold Lacey together was not a bad one.

"You're in the midst of an emotional family crisis," Gold said. "It's not something I'd want to go through alone, in a foreign country, even if I do know my way round and speak enough pidgin Italian to get by."

Belle gave a sad nod of agreement.

"I know we haven't known each other very long and our acquaintance didn't begin in the most inauspicious of ways," Gold said, "but sometimes friendships come from the most unlikely of sources. I'll get Tink to help you make some arrangements."

The young woman poked her head around the door and was introduced as Tink, and Gold left the two together in his office.

Although she could not have been more than a few years older than Belle, Tink made an excellent mother substitute. Within a few minutes, she had made Belle a cup of tea and was looking up flights to Rome, chatting away not exactly happily, but positively, reassuring the younger woman that everything was going to be ok in the end and that Gold would see her right. For a few moments, Belle could almost believe her, but the gnawing doubt in the back of her mind refused to give way, and she knew that she would not be rid of it until she had seen Lacey with her own two eyes. Then Tink said the one sentence that Belle had been dreading. Well, not dreading hearing, as such, but dreading the moment when she would have to face up to it.

“You’ll have to tell your supervisor.”

Belle nodded sadly. She knew that she was going to have to tell Rush, but she desperately did not want to. She wondered if she could get away with just sending him an email once she had already left the country, but she knew that she shouldn’t. Since she had the opportunity to speak to him in person, she ought to take it. She owed that much to him at least, she had not exactly been a model student for these past few weeks and until Lacey was ok, she was only going to get worse.

“Who is it?” Tink asked. “Do you want me to call them?”

Belle shook her head and stood up from the table reluctantly. “I’ll be ok.”

“You sure you don’t need moral support?” Tink asked. “No offence, but you don’t look overly thrilled by the prospect of going it alone.”

“I’ll be ok,” Belle repeated. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She left Gold’s office and made her way down towards the building exit. Over the way, the physics tower looked very tall and imposing. Belle had never found its huge façade at all foreboding before, but now as she made her way across the road, she had the distinct feeling of being led to the scaffold, all the many windows of the offices and labs seeming like disapproving eyes glaring down at her. It should not have taken her long to get up to Rush’s office, but in Belle’s current state of mental turmoil it felt like an age. She was very certain that the corridor had never been quite this long before. It was not that she feared a particularly volatile reaction from Rush on her telling him that she was making an unanticipated trip abroad – that was inevitable and she was prepared for it. Truth be told she could not be sure what was making her quite so nervous other than how his perception of her might change. Surely he had to understand that family came first? He might despair of how Lacey had been eating away at her time and concentration lately, but surely he would realise that this was far more serious than the general feeling of unease that had been plaguing her? Surely…

She knocked on Rush’s door.

“I’m busy,” came the gruff reply. “Go away and come back in open office hours.”

Belle sighed. “It’s me, Nick.”

There was a long pause.

“Come in,” he muttered eventually.

Belle inched open the door and slipped inside the room, and Rush stood from his desk to greet her, leaning back against it and folding his arms.

“Well?” he said. “What’s so urgent that you couldn’t wait to see me?”

“I’ve got to go away for a while,” Belle said. Rush raised an eyebrow. “Emergency trip, I have to go to Rome.”

“Is there any reason for this sudden desire to discover Italy after only two months’ PhD study?” Rush asked. “If your field of research is not to your liking then you need only say so; random sabbaticals are hardly the most professional course of action.”

“I did say ‘emergency’,” Belle said, gritting her teeth and curling her hands into fists to try and keep some control over her temper and stop herself smacking her supervisor round the face. “It’s my sister.”

“The same sister whose antics have encroached upon your attention span for the past few weeks? What’s she done this time that you have to rescue her from?”

Belle snapped. “She might die! My twin sister could be dying and I’m over a thousand miles away! She’s unconscious in hospital, alone in a foreign country and I am going to go and hold her hand because there are some things in life that are a hell of a lot more important than your precious fucking numbers! Maybe if you had someone you loved you’d understand that!”

Rush said nothing, but in that moment, his entire attitude changed, his arms going from defensively crossed to open and hanging loose and useless at his sides. There was a pained look in his eyes behind his glasses, and he nodded.

“Yes,” he said eventually, his voice soft and choked. “Go and hold your sister’s hand. Take as long as you need.”

X

The drive to the airport had been easy; Tink had spent the majority of the time telling Gold everything that she had organised whilst he had been getting himself ready to go, but the rest of their journey had been a tense one, spent in a uncomfortable and slightly awkward silence. Once she was actually on her way to Lacey’s side, Belle’s initial panic had calmed down and she was not quite sure what the best way to broach a conversation with Gold was. After a few failed attempts, they decided by mutual unspoken agreement that it was probably best not to attempt any kind of normal discussion until they had arrived at the hospital and neither of them were feeling quite as horribly tense with the fear of the unknown.

As soon as they had got to the hospital, things had become easier, as they were there with a purpose in mind. Gold had gone off to practice his Italian and once they had found Lacey and been informed of her condition properly, the awkwardness in the silence had given way to a sense of companionship when they had been shown into Lacey’s room.

She looked so small. Belle had been looking at her sister for about three hours now, and she still looked so incredibly small and broken, with her bruised face and her bandages, dried blood from the little cuts and abrasions on her cheek matting her already tangled hair and staining the pillow. Wounds to her chest and abdomen, the doctors had said; broken ribs and a punctured lung. As frightful as she looked, her injuries could have been much worse. The nurses thought that she must have a guardian angel up there somewhere. Unconsciously, Belle touched the locket that still hung around her neck since Gold had given it to her the previous day.

She had talked to her sister almost non-stop, reassuring her that everything was going to be all right, but no matter how many times that Belle told Lacey that she loved her, she knew that it would never be enough, not until her twin woke up and actually heard it, and at length she had lapsed into silence.

“Belle, I think we should probably leave.” Gold’s voice was gentle, but there was a degree of firmness about it that meant the matter was not up for negotiation.

Belle looked up to see that the sky outside the room had gone dark.

“Come on Belle, there’s nothing more we can do now,” Gold said. “She’s in the best place, and the doctors will see her right here.”

Belle nodded, and Gold eased himself out of his chair before offering her a hand out of hers. He was right of course, his words made sense, but she still felt terrible leaving her sister. Gold patted her arm. “I don’t want to leave her either, but we can’t stay here all night.”

Belle sighed and left Lacey’s room, giving her sister a final longing look over her shoulder. When she turned back to face the corridor, she stopped dead, blinking and hardly able to believe her eyes.

Nick was there, sitting in the waiting area just past the nurses’ station.

“Nick?” she breathed.

He looked up then and stood, taking half a step towards her.

Belle didn’t know quite what possessed her to do it, but in that moment, nothing else mattered. Nick had followed her out here, come all the way over to Rome to hold her hand. She ran towards him, throwing her arms around him. He staggered slightly, surprised by the force of her full weight landing against him, but then tentatively wrapped his arms around her back, rubbing her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said, or at least tried to say, but her voice choked around the words.

“You’re welcome,” Nick replied.

Without thinking, Belle kissed him, pressing her lips clumsily to the corner of his mouth. She wouldn’t have done it normally, she wouldn’t even have considered it, even if in the back of her mind she might have wanted to. This was not a normal situation, however, and Belle thought that she might be forgiven her momentary lapse of judgment.

No explanation of her behaviour was necessary, however, as Nick made no move to release his hold on her.

X

Belle couldn’t sleep. She’d gone to bed simply because she didn’t want to try and face the day anymore, and whilst she was tired, she was not in the slightest bit sleepy. The room had long since gone dark, but she knew that Nick was still up, sitting in the windowsill where he’d been perched ever since they had got into the room. On arriving back at the hotel Gold had excused himself to his room and Belle and Nick had been left alone together. The hotel had no spare rooms, so Belle had offered to Nick to bunk up with her without really overtly offering; she had just come up to her room and invited him in to continue their stilted conversation away from the noise and oppressive atmosphere of the bar. They had talked a little, mainly Belle reminiscing about Lacey’s various childhood indiscretions and Nick nodding in the right places. When thinking about Lacey had become too painful, they had steered the conversation in the direction of physics and numbers and their field of study, something comparatively mindless that they could both talk about till the cows come home if necessary. But those conversations so often turned into arguments, and neither of them were in the mood for arguing tonight, so they tailed off on several occasions, until finally Belle had decided to just remove herself from the situation and curl up under the covers.

Presently she peeked her head out and looked over at Nick. The only illumination was the glare from his laptop screen.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Nick didn’t reply for a long time, before responding with a single grunted word. “Work.”

Belle raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t surprised, to be honest, but the part of her that still held some hope that Rush was in fact a normal human being remained sceptical.

“Are you really working, or are you in fact looking up weird and wonderful tentacle porn?”

Nick gave a snort. “Tentacle porn? Really? You look at me and immediately think ‘that’s a man who looks at tentacle porn’?”

“It’s always the quiet ones,” Belle countered. She continued to watch him for a few moments, listening to the steady, quiet tapping of his fingers against the keyboard. The sound was soothing, almost musical in its timbre. On any other occasion it might have sent her to sleep, but Belle knew that slumber was not going to be forthcoming tonight.

She regarded Nick’s face in the stark light from the laptop screen, his scruffy beard and slightly too long hair, and his dark, dark eyes. In the eerie electric glow, they seemed to be bottomless.

He squinted and leaned a little closer into the screen before pinching the bridge of his nose.

“You’re going to ruin your eyes,” Belle said, without thinking, parroting her father as he had always berated her for using her computer without adequate background light.

Nick glanced up at her, then back at the glaring screen. Belle didn’t think she’d ever seen him without that little furrow of concentration between his brows. It was quite endearing really. She wanted to touch it, smooth it out and see his face really relax. God she was tired. Normally those thoughts were kept firmly locked away in the ‘wholly inappropriate’ drawer.

But were they really that inappropriate? He was here with her, after all. He’d dropped everything and come to Rome to hold her hand. She’d kissed him and hugged him and he hadn’t said anything about it. Maybe he was just being a gentleman, putting it down to the rollercoaster of emotions of the past couple of days, accepting it as a spur of the moment action done in gratitude and not bringing it up to spare her embarrassment.

“I didn’t want to wake you with the light,” he said.

Belle gave him a look. “You think I’ve slept at all tonight?” she asked incredulously.

Nick partially closed the laptop and his face fell into shadow.

“You need to keep your strength up,” he said. “You should sleep.”

Belle shook her head. “I know what I _should_ be doing, Nick, but my mind’s decided that sleeping is off the agenda.” She snorted. “I don’t think I’ll sleep till Lace is awake again. Ironic, huh.”

She wished she could see Nick’s face in the darkness. She could easily put the light on, since she’d already established that she was awake and Nick was being blinded by the computer screen, but there was something in the gloom that made her want to keep it. It fitted with the atmosphere, made things easier, less awkward than if they had to face up to everything in the stark light. There was truth in darkness. She’d read that somewhere.

Nick closed the laptop fully and plunged the room into blackness. Belle blinked to get her bearings and gradually the shapes became distinct in the faint moonlight. Nick didn’t move from his seat on the windowsill, and Belle got out of bed to join him there, grabbing her pillow and making herself comfortable beside him. Up close she could see his face better; he was staring out of the window across the city, twisting his wedding band round and round his finger.

Belle immediately recognised the nervous tell. Her dad did it too, when he was anxious, trying to draw on the strength of the woman that was no longer there next to him, and suddenly it explained so much.

_Go and hold your sister’s hand. Take as long as you need._

“When did she die?” she asked quietly.

Nick’s fingers stilled.

“Three years ago. Cancer.”

Belle nodded her understanding. There was a long pause. “You got to say goodbye,” she blurted out eventually, and she immediately regretted it, but then it was too late, and the words were already there on the tip of her tongue, waiting to be spilled. The terrible, gripping fear that she had felt when she had first received the call from the hospital was finally given voice, and she burst into loud, racking, messy sobs. “She can’t die, Nick, not without saying goodbye. I can’t let her go like this, not knowing… The last time we spoke we had a fight. We had a fight every time we spoke, but this was worse because I was so _angry_ with her. The last thing I said to her… She always pushed everyone away, she never let anyone in and I’d snapped at her that one day she’d need someone and there wouldn’t be anyone because she’d have pushed everyone away. And then I got the call that she was in hospital, in a dangerous condition… I can’t let her die with the last words I said to her being that I wouldn’t be there for her when she needed me. I can’t let her die thinking that I was still angry with her. I keep thinking about what she was thinking before she lost consciousness. Was she scared? I’d be scared, if I was alone and hurting and thinking that no-one cared about me and no-one was going to come and hold my hand and tell me to fight.”

She broke off, unable to continue talking through her tears, no longer caring that she was pouring out her heart to her PhD supervisor. The words needed to be said, her guilt had to be admitted before she was ever going to be able to pull herself together for Lacey’s sake.

“She needs to know I love her,” she choked.

Nick didn’t reply, but a moment later she felt his arms come around her, pulling her in against his chest and rubbing her back as she cried.

“I’m sure she knows,” he said. “Deep down.”

Belle stayed like that for a long time, feeling protected in Nick’s arms and not wanting to move, completely uncaring of the fact she was using his shirt as a hankie and his chest was probably getting rather wet.

“It will all be all right, Belle.”

He didn’t sound convinced, and Belle knew that his logical, mathematical mind couldn’t escape the high probabilities of an unfavourable outcome, but he was trying to put a positive spin on it for her sake, and Belle was glad of it. She didn’t want to think about the what-ifs. She didn’t want to think about anything at all. She didn’t want to think about Lacey, because when she did, she felt the horrible nauseating guilt bubbling up in the pit of her stomach.

Rush rested his chin on the top of her head and Belle closed her eyes. Presently he shifted his hold on her and she looked up from his damp shirt to meet his gaze. It was the first time she had seen him looking like he genuinely cared about her, rather than her work.

“I think you need to go back to bed, Belle,” he said. “You’ve had an emotional day, you need to rest.”

Belle sighed and turned her face back towards the window. “I can hardly do that with you tapping away here,” she said. “You’ve had a long day too, you need your sleep as much as I need mine.”

Rush sighed and squeezed her arm. “All right, I’ll come to bed too. Are you one of those who steals the covers all the time?” Belle gave a weak laugh and shook her head, slipping out of Rush’s hold and off the windowsill, making her way back to the bed in the dim moonlight and curling up under the covers. She watched Rush get off the ledge and put his laptop away before stretching out the cricks in his neck and stripping down to his boxers to get into bed. He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, and Belle shifted so that she was doing the same.

“Belle,” he began, and she turned to him, expecting him to continue, but no more words were forthcoming.

“Nick,” she prompted. He ran a hand through his hair with a sigh, as if he was trying to work out the best way of wording what he was going to say. Nick was not the best when it came to words; his primary language was algebra.

“Nick,” Belle said, “will you hold me again please?”

She had felt so safe when he had held her in the window, when she had hugged him in the hospital and he hadn’t let her go. She wished she knew if that was simply out of shock at having his PhD student throwing herself at him, or whether it was due to a genuinely deeper want. Whichever it was, he was like a safety net, a barrier, and she didn’t want to face the world without some kind of protection at that moment.

“Of course.” He shifted a little closer and wrapped his arms around her again, stroking her hair.

Belle fell to thinking once more. She didn’t like it. She needed something, anything to take her mind off it. She couldn’t bear to think of Lacey, and everything else, every other mindless thing she could think of somehow led her mind back to her sister. She didn’t want to think, she didn’t want to feel. She needed to stay strong for both of them now, the way she had always done whilst Lacey was flitting around.

But it was so very hard, being the sensible one all the time, and here, with Nick’s arms around her, Belle felt cared for. She was always the one who had done the caring, of Lacey and their dad, and now having someone caring for her was something of a novelty. Belle sighed against Nick’s chest, and took the plunge. She shouldn’t. It would make life incredibly complicated if she did, but in order to push her thoughts away from the painful direction that was Lacey and her state, hanging in the balance as she was, she kept thinking of that moment in the hospital.

She leaned up and captured Nick’s lips with hers. He didn’t pull away, quite the opposite in fact, relaxing into the unexpected kiss with a soft noise of assent against her mouth.

At length he broke away; in the dim moonlight Belle could see that the frown line was back between his brows.

“Belle, you’re emotional, you’re tired, you don’t know what you want…”

Belle silenced him with another kiss.

“I want it to be over,” she said eventually. “I just want to close my eyes and when I wake up, I want everything to be good again. I want Lacey to be all right, I want her and Gold to be happy together, I want all these things that I just can’t have right now. They’re all impossible, they are never going to happen in a split second, they’re never going to happen right now. The only other thing I want is you, and you’re the only thing that I can have right now so please, if you want it too then please let me have it now because there is nothing else I want that I can have!” Belle was aware of her voice rising and she wondered if the people in the next room could hear her. “If you don’t want it, then that’s fine, I won’t make you do something you don’t want to do, but something tells me that this is what you want just as much as it’s what I want. But don’t tell me that this isn’t what I want and don’t tell me to wait for it. Don’t tell me to wait till I’m less emotional. Don’t tell me to wait, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned today it’s that life is too fucking short to wait for something you want or try to run away from it. That’s what Lacey’s always done, and look where it’s got her! The world might end tomorrow, and my sister might never know I love her, and I might never know how you feel about me, so since I’ve got the chance for once I want to take it.”

“Oh Belle…”

Nick pulled her in closer and kissed her again, his hands moving roughly over her torso, finally coming to rest on her hip to push her over onto her back and cover her with his warm weight. Belle let her thighs fall apart to cradle his body; she could feel the heat of his cock even through all the layers of clothing that separated them. Presently he moved, shifting so that he was no longer smothering her completely and he could take his weight on one side and trail his other hand over her body, cupping her breast through her thin cotton nightshirt and rubbing her nipple to a stiff bud with his thumb. Belle arched up into his touch, feeling a blissful nothingness in her mind, just this one moment with nothing outside to have to worry about until the morning and hateful reality set in.

Nick’s hand moved again and skimmed down to her thigh, raking up the hem of her nightshirt to stroke up the inside of her leg and trace over the gusset of her knickers before slipping down inside.

He stayed there for a moment, palm gently cupping her mons and fingertips almost but not quite touching her entrance, as if he was waiting for her to come to her senses and back out. Belle had no intention of doing so and raised her hips, pressing up into his hand. With her obvious physical encouragement, so Nick’s confidence grew and he pressed a fingertip to her entrance, stroking her a little. Belle began to feel the wet heat pooling between her legs, coating his finger, and she rubbed up against his hand, wanting more. He moved back up from her entrance, painting a trail of warm honey as he did so, spreading the slippery juices along her cleft. For a while he just continued to pet her, teasing more and more honey from her vagina and stroking the folds of her labia until her sex and her nether curls were completely soaked. Belle wriggled against his fingers, desperate for him to touch her clit already, since he’d managed to scrupulously avoid it in his ministrations so far, always coming within a hair’s breadth but never putting his finger where she really needed him.

“Please, Nick.” She wriggled her hips again, rubbing up against his hand to try and get some pressure on her clit.

“All in good time,” he murmured, and she felt him press a kiss to her temple.

Belle reached down and pushed her knickers down a little so that his hand on her was unimpeded, and finally Nick found her clit, giving it a tentative rub with his thumb. Belle raised her hips up off the mattress, wanting more and more friction against her core. She thought she heard Nick chuckle and she felt him readjust his hold against her, spreading her folds and sliding one finger inside her, the heel of his hand hitting her clit as he petted her inner walls. A second finger joined the first, and Belle fisted the hem of her nightie, mauling the light fabric completely out of shape. She was half-tempted to rip the thing off, but something in the back of her mind stopped her.

Belle’s orgasm was as intense as it was sudden; after so long being kept on the brink but never quite getting there, it came forcefully and unexpectedly, and Belle could not help but cry out.

“Yes, yes, Nick, please, yes…”

She didn’t care how desperate she sounded, because in that moment nothing else really mattered. In that moment, nothing else really existed, just her and Nick and the mattress underneath them that was probably the only thing stopped Belle from freefalling through the floor. There was nothing to worry about, no reason to fear, just a warm feeling of bliss spreading from her centre through her limbs.

At length, Nick moved his hand and brought it up to cover one of hers where it was still tangled in her nightshirt, giving a reassuring squeeze before letting go. Belle wanted to say something, but she wasn’t sure what was appropriate. She wondered if he was still hard, if he’d come already whilst she was too spaced out to notice, and she groped blindly for his lap in the darkness before giving it up as a bad job. Presently, down beside her hip, she felt Nick take his cock out of his boxers; she sensed the light skim of his hand against her skin as he roughly tugged at his length. There was something functional in the way he pleasured himself, precise and mathematical almost, nothing lazy or languid in his movements as there had been when he had touched her. She turned over onto her side, reached down and closed her hand over his on his cock; she wanted to touch him, to return the pleasure he had given her. Nick’s movement stilled and he let Belle explore a little. She risked a glance up at his face. It was hard to make out his expression in the darkness, but he seemed to be narrow-eyed and catlike, but for that little frown line that was still furrowing his brow. Belle reached out to press her thumb to it.

“Stop overthinking it and just kiss me,” she murmured. “Please.”

Nick obliged, leaning in closer to slant his mouth over hers, and Belle felt the first drops of precum smear onto her fingertips. Nick groaned against her lips and began to move his hand again, working with Belle in a clumsy tandem, their strokes becoming harder and faster until Nick garbled something completely incomprehensible and pulled away from her, leaning over the side of the bed to reach for something. A moment later he was back, something soft – a sock? – in his hand. Belle ran a finger down his length to touch his quivering balls through his boxers, and removed her hand, letting him finish himself off. She wanted to see his face when he came, to see if his features would relax a little at last.

She was not disappointed. The line between his brows faded as he pumped his cock once, twice more and stilled with a final jerk of his hips. They lay there in the dark for a while, unmoving, the only sound Nick’s heavy, panting breaths. He’d managed to contain most of the semen, but Belle could still feel a damp patch on the sheets when she finally shifted her position. She was not sure how long they lay there before Nick got up without a word and padded across to the bathroom, his cock still peeping out of his boxers. Belle turned over onto her back and stared at the ceiling, trying not to listen to the sounds from the other room and finally giving up, accepting that the dark of the night made everything so much louder. She wondered what she should say on his return. Thank you? It didn’t sound right, somehow. Perhaps it was best just to say nothing. That seemed to have worked quite well for the past few minutes. She closed her eyes. They’d have to face up to it in the morning, of course, when the cold, sober light of day made everything so stark and new, but Belle did not regret what they had done. For a few moments, however brief, she’d had something that she wanted, something that she could actually have. She felt something twist in the pit of her stomach, a nasty little voice in the back of her mind berating her for behaving like this whilst Lacey was still in such a precarious position, and she tried to squash it down. She had needed this, needed to remember what feeling good felt like before she completely drowned in her turbulent emotions. Lacey would understand. She was the queen of going after what she wanted, and Belle knew that when her sister woke, Lacey would be despairing of Belle denying herself something that she wanted for her sake. Lacey might not often deny herself things that she wanted – Gold being a case in point – but at least she did so on nobody’s terms but her own.

Belle became aware of the fact her panties were halfway down her thighs and she pulled them back up; the wet gusset was now cold against her skin and she gave an involuntary shiver, reminded again of Nick’s clever, gentle fingers in her and on her. After a moment’s thought she shimmied out of the underwear again and pulled her nightie down to cover herself; she could still feel the dampness between her thighs but it was more comfortable than wearing wet knickers.

Lacey had always teased her for wearing knickers under her nightie, Belle thought absently. Maybe that was where the ongoing convent joke had come from. Sister Isabelle and Racy Lacey, a dynamic duo, inseparable against the odds. Until Lacey left, of course… Belle wondered what Lacey would say when she told her what just happened.

_Why Sister Isabelle, whatever has come over you? That’s something I would do._

Belle shook her head. She did not want to think about Lacey. She would have to think about Lacey in the morning when the dire situation presented itself in stark and massive relief. She did not want to have to think about anything. The sex had been a wonderful distraction whilst it had lasted, and she did not regret it, but now that she was alone in bed the terrible gnawing fears were coming creeping back. Belle cast a quick glance in the direction of the bathroom door before looking away again; she wanted Nick to come back and hold her and stop the unwanted thoughts from creeping in.

Presently she felt him get back into bed beside her, and she reached for his hand in the darkness. He curled his fingers through hers and brought her hand up to his lips.

“You’ll get through this, Belle. I promise,” she thought she heard him say as her body finally relaxed enough to sleep…

When she woke, Belle was alone in bed. She raised her head a couple of inches and looked around through eyes still fuzzy with sleep, but there was no sign of Nick anywhere in the room – he had not returned to the windowsill as she thought he might have done. His laptop and clothes were gone; the half-open door to the bathroom showed that he was not in there either. The only evidence she had to show that he had been there in the first place was the stain on the sheet.

Belle did not know what to think. She felt numb. Something ought to be registering, she knew that. She had slept with her PhD supervisor, and now he’d vanished into the ether.

But last night, he hadn’t been her PhD supervisor. He’d just been Nick. She’d slept with Nick.

And now he was gone.

Did he regret last night? Had he just done it to make her feel better, and now, on waking, he had thought better of it? Was he worried that he’d taken advantage of her in some way?

Belle shook her head. None of the thoughts would stick; the overarching image of Lacey looking so small and fragile in her hospital bed cast everything else into shadow. Lacey was her priority; Nick and everything else could wait and could be sorted out when they got home. She felt sick, horrified at her selfishness for worrying about herself and her relationships when Lacey was still so helpless. She got out of bed and rushed into the bathroom, retching. There was nothing to come up, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast the previous day, but she still gagged on bile, hot tears forcing their way past her screwed up eyes to roll down her cheeks. Belle gave a whimper and slumped onto the tile floor beside the toilet, unheeding of the cold ceramic against her bare backside. One of her earliest memories was from when she had the gastric flu when she was six. Lacey had held her hair back for her every time she threw up and still didn’t get sick herself.

Lacey was always the strong one. Belle had been the weaker, sickly one. If there was a bug going round, Belle was guaranteed to catch it, but Lacey had always been well and healthy. It didn’t make sense for Lacey to be the one in hospital now. She was the one who could live forever if she put her mind to it. How could her life, something so hale and robust, be so delicate and fragile now? Lacey was the fearless, uninhibited one, possessed of a courage that Belle had never had, in every area except one.

There was a soft knock on the hotel room door. Belle shuffled along the bathroom floor and peered round into the bedroom, looking pointedly at the door.

“Who is it?” she called.

“Gold. I just wanted to see how you were.”

Belle closed her eyes. “I’m ok,” she said eventually. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“All right.”

She heard his steps move away and rested her chin on her knees, returning to her previous train of thought, to Lacey and subsequently to Gold. The words had been on the tip of her tongue for the past few days, but she had not had the nerve to speak them.

_She was going to come back for you, Gold. Six years flitting here, there and everywhere and you were the one who made her want to come home. But she wouldn’t admit it. I could tell from her voice that her conviction was wavering, that she was considering coming home. She was trying so hard to push against it, deny it, deny she had any feelings for you, deny that she wanted to come home and find you, and it made me so angry._

She was still angry. Even angrier than she had been before, knowing that Gold returned Lacey’s feelings. If Lacey had admitted her feelings and accepted that she wanted more, Gold would have been happy to oblige, and they would have been happy. As it was, both Gold’s happiness and Lacey’s own both now hung precariously in the balance with Lacey’s life, because Lacey couldn’t and wouldn’t take that risk. She was strong, confident, tenacious, but only Belle knew just how scared she really was on the inside. She was so afraid of losing people that she made doubly sure that there was no-one for her to lose. She’d rather have no happiness to begin with than know it and lose it.

_Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all_ , Belle thought, but Lacey did not see the world that way. She sighed and opened the locket, her mother smiling back at her. She had been distraught when their mother had died, but Lacey more so. Of the twins, Belle had always been closer to their dad, Lacey to their mum, and Belle knew that her sister had taken a long time to move on and come to terms with her grief when Mum died.

She got up, the wave of nausea long passed, and returned to the bedroom to get dressed and face the day.

X

If Gold was surprised to see Rush sitting at the bar when he came down, he didn’t show it. He knew the other man vaguely by sight and reputation, but the departments of physics and history rarely had cause to overlap. Gold hung back before going over to him, taking the time to make an assessment. He wondered where Rush fitted in to the picture, how he slotted into Belle’s life.

That he cared for her deeply was evident; why else would he drop everything and come to Rome to see her? Looking at him now though, he seemed almost regretful of his decision. The bar was closed this early in the morning, but he still stayed sitting there, staring into the mirror behind it with obviously unseeing eyes, elbows planted firmly on the wood and chin resting on clasped hands, almost as if in prayer.

Gold came over and slipped onto the bar stool beside Rush.

“You all right?” he asked.

Rush didn’t look at him as he responded. “I shouldn’t have come.”

Gold considered this reply; he had no idea what to say to that statement. It had come from nowhere and was hanging heavily in the air between them, silently demanding to be addressed. He had seen Belle’s face when she had recognised Rush in the waiting room. He had seen her smile, even if only for a split second, and he had seen the hug and the kiss that she had given to the other professor.

“I don’t think Belle would agree,” he said eventually. “I think she appreciates having a friend whilst she’s going through all this.”

“She’s got you,” Rush snapped. “I’m only confusing the issue. I’m going back to Storybrooke.”

Gold shook his head. “Not without saying goodbye,” he said. “You can’t just turn up out of the blue and then leave again into the blue twelve hours later without so much as a word. Belle needs your support just as much as she needs mine. More so – you’re far more important than a man her sister once screwed. Belle is a good person, Dr Rush. I may not have known her as long as you, but I know that she is good, and kind, and sweet, and I know that she doesn’t deserve to be messed around. You can’t offer her a shoulder to cry on and then take it away without warning and without the courtesy of a goodbye.”

There was silence for a long, tense moment.

“Dr Gold, let go of me.”

Rush’s voice was cold and just the wrong side of dangerous, and Gold looked down to see that he had the other man’s shoulder in a hard grip, fingers digging in. He immediately let go, a little frightened by his own vehemence.

“Nick? Gold?”

Belle’s voice interrupted the palpable quiet and the screaming tension immediately broke and began to dissipate. Gold turned to see her standing in the entrance to the bar, handbag over her shoulder, ready to go. “Are we going?” she asked plainly. Gold nodded and moved over towards her; Rush stayed put. He glanced over his shoulder at Belle and gave a smile that did not quite ring true.

“I think I’ll wait here. Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”

Belle rolled her eyes but didn’t push the point. “See you later then.”

Gold hoped that his words had had the desire effect and they would indeed see him later. He shook himself mentally and put the thought to the back of his mind; Lacey was their priority at that point in time and they were going to see her better before they tried to work out what the hell was going on in Rush’s complicated mind.

The journey to the hospital did not seem to take as long today, now that they knew what the status quo was and what to expect. Gold suspected that the strong morning sun helped as well, making everything seem so much more positive and optimistic than the grey late afternoon that they had arrived on yesterday. Whereas before everything had been bleak, now it seemed bright, the shadows chased away with the dawn. Belle herself seemed much calmer, although he knew that she would not be happy until she knew for certain that Lacey was going to be all right.

She was still asleep when they entered her room, but the doctors were hopeful that she would wake naturally very soon. Gold relayed this to Belle, who nodded her thanks and acknowledgement before turning back to Lacey, gently taking her sister’s hand in hers and stroking her fingers.

“Come on Lacey, fight for us. You were always a fighter, you can’t stop now.”

After a few moments hovering in the doorway to the room, unsure of whether it would be better for him to leave them alone or stay to give Belle moral support, Gold decided in favour of the latter and pulled up the second chair beside Lacey’s bed. Belle gave him a brief smile, and they lapsed into silence for a while.

“I know they say that you should talk to people who are unconscious,” Belle said eventually. “They say that they can hear you even in deep sleep. I just have no idea what to say. I think I said everything yesterday. I kept expecting her to wake up and tell me to shut up so she could get some peace and quiet.”

Gold had to give a snort of laughter, as unforgiveable as mirth seemed in the sombreness of the quiet room, and Belle gave another half-smile.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for coming with me. I don’t think I could have coped on my own.”

“You’re welcome,” Gold said. “I wanted to see Lacey all right myself.” He paused. “I’m not sure that I should stay once she wakes up, though.” He could not help but think again of the circumstances of his and Lacey’s parting, and Belle’s cutting words when they first met.

“Why not?” Belle asked. “You care about her, it’s obvious. No-one would agree to randomly accompany someone they’ve only just met on a madcap hospital dash halfway across Europe if they didn’t care about the person they were going to see.”

“I do care,” Gold said. “I just don’t know if she feels the same way about me. Like I said, she left rather… abruptly. You said it yourself, she probably didn’t want to see me again. Something tells me that perhaps mine is not one of the first faces she wants to see when she wakes up.”

Belle shook her head. “Considering the amount of times we fought, I’d be amazed if mine was, to be honest.” She sighed. “She does care, Gold. I know that this is only coming from me and I’m not exactly the most reliable source of information right now, but I think that even not having spoken to her for three weeks and not having seen her for several years, I know my sister better than anyone else. She pushes people away, it’s what she does. Ever since our mum died, she’s been scared of getting close to people in case she loses them and gets hurt and heartbroken in the same way she did when Mum passed away. The closer she gets and the more she cares, the quicker and more sudden the break. She likes you, a lot. She told me. To be honest, I think yours might just be the face she needs to see. Maybe this will persuade her that sometimes, life is too short and she ought to take a chance now and then. If she can come through something like this without breaking, then she can survive anything. Maybe you two will get a second chance.”

Gold smiled. “I’d like that.”

They fell back into a companionable silence for a while, until Belle reached up and unclipped the pendant from round her neck; Gold recognised it as Lacey’s locket. She handed it to him.

“It’s Lacey’s,” Belle said simply. “We shared a lot of things but this was only ever Lacey’s. Now that I’ve got the chance to give it back, it doesn’t feel right to hang onto it. And since you only gave it to me because you thought that you’d missed your chance to give it to Lace, it makes sense for you to give it to her in person now that you’ve got the chance.”

Gold rubbed the pad of his thumb over the worn silver jewellery, tracing the delicate patterns.

“I don’t think the nurses would approve,” he said, but nevertheless, he began to gently thread the fine chain under Lacey’s neck and clasped it off to one side, the drop sitting neatly in the hollow of her throat.

“Screw the nurses,” Belle said. “That locket was her lifeline, her armour. She never felt naked with it on; it protected her.” She sighed. “When we were very small, Lacey felt invincible as long as mum was with her. If mum told her she could achieve something, then Lacey would achieve it, it was as simple as that. Having the locket meant mum was with her all the time.” Belle gave an involuntary shudder and Gold reached across to squeeze her shoulder.

“I just can’t help thinking that it was the day you gave it back to me – that was the night she had the accident. I know it’s stupid but I thought it was all connected. So maybe giving it back to her will help her now, even if it couldn’t before.”

Gold didn’t respond. He was not one for believing in fate, and he was certainly of the opinion that sometimes, coincidences did happen, but if the notion gave Belle comfort, then he was not going to decry it as foolish nonsense.

A yawn escaped him without warning.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

Belle gave the smallest hint of a smile. “Don’t worry, I know the feeling.”

“I take it as a given that you didn’t sleep well either?”

Belle’s cheeks coloured slightly and she shook her head. Gold leaned back in his chair. The only saving grace last night had been the fact that his room was totally different to the last one he had occupied when he had stayed at that same hotel, so at least he was not completely surrounded by reminders of his and Lacey’s hot August night together. The irony really was quite cruel, Gold thought, that he should revisit the scene that started it all so soon, and in such very different circumstances. He closed his eyes, remembering the last time he had seen Lacey, stretched out in his bed, sleepy and post-coital and looking as if nothing was wrong in the world at all. He couldn’t believe that it was only three weeks ago; it felt like a lifetime had passed since then.

“Gold!” He felt Belle reach across and bat his arm. “She’s awake!”

Gold startled, almost sliding out of his chair before he quickly regained his balance to see Lacey’s eyes open. He was surprised by how quiet and easy the whole process had been, no frantic monitors beeping or alarms screeching. She’d just woken as if from a normal night’s sleep.

“Hello sweetheart,” Belle said softly, stroking her sister’s cheek. “Welcome back. You gave us a right scare there.”

Lacey didn’t say anything; she just stared up at Belle, blinking rapidly against tears that were welling up between her lashes.

“Don’t cry Lace, you’ll make me cry too.” Belle wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. “It’s all going to be ok, Lacey, we’re here.”

Lacey gave the smallest hint of a smile, her mouth turning up a little at the corner. Gold stood; it was now or never. He could walk out of the room and quietly leave the sisters to themselves, as if he had never been there, or he could make his presence known.

Lacey made the decision for him, turning her head a little so that he was in her field of vision.

There was a long moment in which nothing happened. Then Belle took Lacey’s hand that she was still holding and brought it up to her throat, touching her fingers to her locket, and Lacey smiled at him. In that moment, Gold knew that coming back had been justified.

He had to leave then – they needed to let the nurses know that Lacey was awake so that they could take the necessary medical steps – but when he returned with the staff, he did not slip away again. He and Lacey could sort out their relationship once she was better, but even if nothing came of it and they continued on their separate lives, they would at least have had the chance to sort it out. Fate had not robbed them of that chance and Gold knew that he was not going to let it go either.

The doctors had warned that Lacey would still be drowsy and would need a lot of sleep for the first few days due to her medication, and Gold and Belle stayed with her until she fell asleep again a couple of hours later. She hadn’t yet spoken, but she’d mouthed ‘love you sis’ to Belle, and by the time they left her she was smiling properly again. Gold was left in no doubt that his previous fears had been ungrounded and despite all the odds, Lacey was actually happy to see him again – if a little stunned that he was there in the hospital with her considering how suddenly she had walked out of his life.

There was no sign of Rush in the bar when they got back to the hotel, but this was not all that much of a surprise to Gold. They had been away for at least five hours and he couldn’t be expected to stay in the same place for all that time, waiting for them. Belle went to go upstairs and freshen up but the receptionist called her back.

“Signora, note for you.”

Belle came over and took the folded paper, and immediately, Gold saw her demeanour change, from the bright, bubbly happiness she had been showing all afternoon to something cold and hard as her eyes scanned the message.

“Belle?” he ventured. “Is everything all right?”

It took a few more moments before Belle looked up to meet his eyes.

“Rush has gone back home,” she said simply, scrunching up the paper into a little ball and shoving it in the pocket of her skirt. There was silence for a while, and Gold felt the indignation bubbling in the pit of his stomach on Belle’s behalf. She was hurt by his leaving without saying goodbye, he could tell, and he was angry that his earlier words to the other man had had absolutely no effect whatsoever.

“Still, we’re celebrating,” Belle said, the smile she had hastily erected not quite reaching her eyes yet. “If he wants to miss out then it’s his loss. Lacey’s awake and I feel the distinct desire to toast to her recovery.”

Gold thought that this was an excellent idea. He did not mention Rush again throughout the rest of the evening, and by the time they turned in for the night, Belle seemed to be happy again.

X

Once she had opened her eyes, Lacey's condition improved very quickly. There was one thing that could be said of her stubbornness, and that was that it extended to every other possible part of her life. As soon as her body had decided that it was the right time to get better, it was as determined about the process as it had been to stay asleep. Gold watched at the doorway of her room for a while as she talked to Belle; he was loathe to interrupt the two sisters but he was still morbidly intrigued by what they could be saying. They were both smiling, which Gold had taken to be a very good sign. It was with some surprise that he realised that he had not seen Lacey's full, genuine smile all that much during their time together. He had seen her challenging little smirk and her mischievous grin, but that warm, genuine, enthusiastic smile had rarely crossed her features. When they were both giggling like this, it was clearer than ever that Belle was Lacey's mirror image and vice versa, even though with the two sisters next to each other, he could normally tell them apart with ease.

Presently there was a lull in the conversation and Lacey's smile faded, so Gold took the opportunity to slip into the room. Neither of the women noticed his entrance at first, and Lacey continued to speak, looking down at her fingernails and picking at the chipped polish there.

"It's ironic really, isn't it," she said. "I try so hard not to get hurt and to push away everyone who might hurt me, and when I do get hurt, the worst hurt I've ever been, it wasn't a someone who hurt me, it was a something. All that pushing... It didn't help. All that pushing for nothing. I still got hurt."

"Oh Lace..." Belle took one of her sister’s hands in hers. "I don't really think you can compare the two hypothetical situations in the same terms. Heartbreak and a speeding car are two very different things."

"Oh, I don't know," Lacey said, and her smile was back, playing at the corner of her mouth. "In all the books and all the songs, they do always compare falling in love to being hit by a train. Such a lovely, romantic image, that."

Gold had to give a snort of laughter at her cheerful cynicism, and the sisters looked up and realised his presence. Lacey did not greet him, but her smile remained in place.

"Are you off then?" Belle asked. Gold nodded, he did not have long before he would have to go and find himself a taxi to the airport. "I'll leave you two alone."

She got up and slipped past him out of the room, leaving Gold and Lacey in a not uncomfortable silence.

"You're leaving," Lacey said. Her voice was soft, resigned almost.

"Yes," Gold said. "I can't stay, Lacey, as much as I would love to. I have ties back home and I can't ignore them. But I would very much like to see you again."

Lacey gave a tentative nod, but didn't say anything, letting him go on. Gold fished around in his pockets for a scrap of paper and scribbled his phone number on it. "If you'd like to see me again, that's your ticket." He paused. "I'm not going to pursue you if you don't want to be pursued, but I will wait for you until you know whether you want to be pursued or not."

Lacey nodded, turning the piece of paper over and over between her fingers before finally slipping it carefully into one of the pockets of her handbag.

"If you want to take a leap of faith, then I'm willing to do the same," Gold said, before adding, "and if all else fails, Belle knows where to find me." Lacey laughed, and her smile returned.

"Thank you," she said. "I'd like that." She fell silent for a while and Gold was about to say goodbye when she spoke again. "It's odd, really. For the longest time I thought that being out here, travelling, living the way that I did... I thought that I was really living life, that my old existence had been just that, an existence. But just now I've realised that I wasn't living life, I was running away from it." She sighed. "Part of me wants to keep running, because I'm so used to it now."

"Don't stop," Gold said. "It's part of who you are." He couldn't imagine Lacey any other way; every time he tried to envisage her without her wild and wicked demeanour and whirlwind life, she began to metamorphose into Belle, and the two women were infinitely different. "Just... Maybe slow down a little."

Lacey made a soft noise of agreement. "Belle says I run through life so fast I never take the time to actually enjoy it as it's happening. Quality over quantity and all that."

They fell into an amicable silence again.

"Dance, don't run," Gold suggested eventually, the thought coming to him suddenly and forcefully. That was something that he could imagine perfectly, Lacey dancing through her life, still flitting around on light feet but with a laughing smile on her face, enjoying the journey, no matter the tempo. Lacey nodded.

"Would you like this dance, Prof?" she asked, demurely offering her hand. Gold took it and pressed his lips to her knuckles.

"I'd love it, Miss French. I'll wait for you in the ballroom."

Lacey nodded again. "I'll see you there."

Gold kissed her properly then, a long kiss that they would both remember, and Lacey relaxed into it with a happy sigh.

It was not a goodbye, Gold thought. It was more an au revoir.


	3. Part Three - Back to Storybrooke

Belle was vaguely aware of someone speaking to her as she stormed down the corridor towards Rush’s office, but she did not pay the voice any attention. She was a woman on a mission, and if she stopped now then she would chicken out and she would never get to the bottom of the maddening conundrum that was Nicholas Rush. As it was, her anger was fuelling her, and if she let herself cool down and think logically then the thing would never be done. Belle had always been the calm and collected one; it was Lacey who thought with her heart rather than her head and jumped in at the deep end, but today, Belle was going to take a leaf out of her sister’s book. Whilst some would deem this unwise, Belle was too incandescently furious to care.

Three months had passed since the panicked trip to Rome. Lacey was back in the UK, and after a period spent recuperating and regaining her strength back home with their dad, who had welcomed his prodigal daughter back with open arms, she was now fully recovered from her ordeal. For the first few weeks after their return, Belle had not noticed the difference, so caught up in her own familial problems and trying to regain her footing after the crisis was finally under control, but as things got back onto an even keel, she had realised that something fundamental had changed about Rush. Namely, he was avoiding her. He was an antisocial person at the best of times and did his best not to be found by the majority of the students and faculty alike, but he had reached a level of recalcitrance that even he had not previously surpassed; his office remaining locked and off limits and his emails going unanswered. What had happened in Rome needed to be discussed – Belle needed to know where they stood and how he understood that night. They had not had a chance to speak about it whilst they were still in Italy – Lacey’s waking and Rush’s silent departure had put paid to that, and he had remained silent ever since Belle had followed him back to Storybrooke. It was not something that could simply be swept under the rug and forgotten about. Just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so everything in the world had to have a reason behind it, a meaning. Belle needed to know what their night together meant for Rush, because then she had a chance of working out her own confused feelings over the issue.

Every time she had tried for any kind of contact with him, however, he had remained aloof, even when her questions pertained to her field of study and were not remotely connected to their personal lives. Three months with nary a whisper.

Until today. Belle crushed the sheet of paper up in one fist, already torn and mussed beyond all recognition, the hateful words indelibly imprinted onto her brain.

She knew that Rush was in his office, she’d seen him in the window, and she had decided to take her chance and corner him like the scared rabbit he was, hiding away from any kind of accountability for what had happened, what was currently happening.

The office door was locked and Belle rattled the handle.

“Nicholas Rush, open this door or so help me I will break it down!” she yelled through the wood. There was no response from inside, and the creative part of Belle’s brain entertained the fanciful notion of him escaping out of the window and shimmying down the drainpipe. The amusing image was not enough to quell her ire, and Belle slammed her entire bodyweight against the door. All this succeeded in doing was making her shoulder hurt and thus making her even angrier.

“You damn coward!” she shouted. “You don’t want to face up to it so you’re just getting rid of the problem! It won’t help, Nicholas!”

He still did not reply and the window scenario was becoming more likely. A couple of the other lecturers in the physics department had stuck their heads out of their office doors to find out what all the racket was about, but Belle was past the point of caring what they thought or being embarrassed at becoming an impromptu floorshow for her faculty. She was going to get into that office if it killed her – although if she kept going with brute force alone it might well do. Belle felt for a hairpin. Lacey had taught her to pick locks, and it was one skill that she’d learned from her sister that she’d never had the opportunity nor the inclination to practice. It took her a good ten minutes to spring the lock, and she threw the door open with such force that it bounced off the wall and she jumped into the office to prevent it hitting her on the backswing.

Rush was still there, staring at the dry wipe board. He didn’t look at Belle as she slammed the door shut and folded her arms.

“You’re getting rid of me,” she said, brandishing the crumpled email. “I hear nothing from you for three months and now you’re getting rid of me.”

“I’m not getting rid of you.” Rush’s voice was infuriatingly calm and he still would not do her the common courtesy of looking at her whilst he spoke to her. “I think it would be best if you continued your research under another professor. Professor James has an excellent reputation in the field of theoretical physics and will be a good thesis supervisor.”

“You didn’t discuss this with me. You didn’t tell me anything about this. You emailed me to tell me I had a new PhD supervisor. What makes you so sure I need or want another supervisor? What gives you any right to make these kind of changes to my study, to my _life_?”

With Rush’s attention still monopolised by the board, his answer was not one that Belle wanted to hear.

“I thought it would be best.”

Belle took a deep breath. It didn’t help. She was going to get to the bottom of this and she was going to do it now. She stalked across the room, grabbed the rag that Rush used to clean the dry wipe board and rubbed away all the densely packed numbers before wrestling his notebook from his grip and shoving it down the front of her sweater.

“Goddammit Rush will you stop acting like a child,” she growled.

Finally Rush met her eyes, and folded his arms.

“I’m sure screaming through my door, breaking into my office, destroying three hours of work and holding my notes to ransom isn’t at all acting like a child,” he said.

“And I’m sure that ignoring me for weeks on end then sending me an email to tell me you’re getting rid of me is incredibly mature!” Belle thrust the paper at him and let it drop to the ground when he did not take it. Her anger was ebbing away now as she panted, her outburst leaving her out of breath.

“Why, Nicholas?” she asked. “Why this, why now? Just why? ‘Thinking it’s for the best’ isn’t a good enough reason, I want to know why you suddenly think it’s for the best. Am I not good enough for you? Is the standard of my work not to your liking? Maybe if you’d answered some of my bloody queries it would be better. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because if you keep working with me, you have to face up to what happened in Rome, and you don’t want to do that. You want to keep pretending that it never happened, that you were never there, that we never slept together.”

Rush sighed and looked out of the window.

“Belle…” he began, but Belle was in full flow.

“If it meant nothing to you, I can accept that. If you did it because you felt sorry for me, I can accept that. If you feel guilty because you think you took advantage of me – which is categorically not true, by the way – then I can accept that. What I can’t accept is not knowing why you did it then why you vanished and suddenly stopped speaking to me.”

Rush didn’t respond, but his nervous tell was back, fingers running over the band of gold on his left hand.

“Is it because you feel unfaithful to Gloria?” Belle suggested. “For the love of God, Rush, talk to me! Have the decency to say something, _anything_ to my face.”

“I shouldn’t have done it.”

Rush finally faced her and met her hard stare, his own dark eyes unfathomable. “You are so lovely, and you were so sad, and I wanted to make you feel better, because I couldn’t stand seeing someone so lovely being so sad.”

“I wanted it too,” Belle said softly. “There’s no need to feel guilty about that. I wanted it, and it was wonderful.”

“I know you wanted it,” Rush said. “But were you still going to want it next morning when you woke up in the clear light of day? When Lacey woke up and you weren’t so fraught? So I thought it best to stay away.”

Belle resisted the urge to slap him.

“You don’t get to decide what I think or how I feel, Rush. I was completely clear-headed and sober when I made that choice, you know that. What we had was completely understood and between two consenting adults. You don’t get to decide that I’m going to regret a decision made on the spur of the moment.” She sighed, her vehemence gone. “I don’t regret it, Nick. I just regret what happened since. I regret that you took it upon yourself to make yourself into the moustache-twirling villain and me into the air-headed damsel in distress who can’t think for herself, that’s not fair on either of us.”

Rush looked away again, back out of the window.

“You’ve got to decide what you want, Nick,” Belle said. “You can’t just hide in here and ignore the fact and hope it goes away; you’re worse than Lacey. She denied it and ran away from it but at least she knew what she wanted. You don’t even know what you want.”

She pulled his notebook out of her sweater and pressed it back into his hand. “I’m going to see Professor James,” she said. “What we had… It was a taster, and I want more, Nick, and if you don’t want more, that’s fine. If you do want more, then you know where to find me. But you have to tell me. You have to make that decision. It’s not going to go away because you get rid of the component parts. This isn’t mathematics. It can’t be explained away with an equation. This is real, beautifully complicated life.”

Belle turned and made to leave the room. Her hand was on the door handle when Rush called her back.

“Wait, Belle.”

He was looking straight at her as she turned to glance back over her shoulder.

“I do know what I want.”

Belle raised one eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

Rush nodded and came across the room purposefully, cupping Belle’s face and tilting her head up to capture her lips with his own. There was nothing tentative in the kiss, all action and decisiveness. Belle brought up one hand to card into the ends of his hair and pull him down, leaning back against the door.

“I want more,” Rush said when he finally released her. “I suppose that’s the other reason I transferred you to James. Avoiding temptation.”

Belle laughed. “Feel free to succumb any time. Although, this is an excellent reason for me staying with James now.”

Rush tilted his head to question.

“Honestly,” Belle said. “If I don’t have an outside source to present my work to on a regular basis, I don’t think we’re going to get anything done.”

Rush snorted and kissed her again. As much as she wanted to stay there, Belle reluctantly pulled away.

“I really do have to go,” she said. “I’m teaching in ten minutes.”

Rush pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll see you later, then,” he murmured.

Belle nodded. “I’ll make sure of it.”

X

It wasn’t often that Gold went out for a drink with his colleagues and it was even less often that he went out for a drink in a bar that his students were more than likely to frequent, but it had been a trying week and all he wanted was to drown his sorrows, uncaring of his surroundings.

The Rabbit Hole was one of the most popular bars outside of the campus itself, always guaranteed to be packed out with students and faculty alike on any given night. It was Tink’s last day before she went home to Canberra and she’d wanted to soak up as much of Storybrooke’s atmosphere as she could before she had to leave. Naturally, the Rabbit Hole had been suggested as a destination for their evening excursion.

The barstaff, affectionately known as Bunny Girls despite being male in the majority and clad in jeans and t-shirts rather than scanty underwear, gave a nod of acknowledgement as the archivists entered – whilst Gold did not come here often, he came here often enough, and in the few hellish months of his divorce he’d been in here far more often than was strictly respectable. Usually at ridiculous hours in the morning.

As Gold moved towards the bar, however, something – or rather someone – caught his attention and he stopped between two tables, transfixed. He’d know that hair anywhere. It had been in that same hairspray-glued mess when he’d first seen it, and then he’d seen it plastered down her back in the shower, and finally he’d seen it dry into its natural silken waves. He’d seen it greasy and tangled and matted with blood, spread over a hospital pillow and still the most beautiful hair he’d ever seen.

She turned then, the stack of empty glasses tucked carefully in her arms, and she smiled that slow smile that began as a smirk at the corner of her mouth and gradually made its way over her whole face. She was not at all shocked or surprised by his presence, not in the same way that he was by hers. Indeed, she wore exactly the same expression she’d worn in the mirror of the hotel bar all those months ago. A patient expression. One that told him that she’d been waiting for him, and she was going to make sure that the wait was worth her while.

“Gold. Gold? Gold!”

The moment was broken by Tink’s voice in his ear and the cold, wet press of a whiskey glass against his hand. Gold took it and brought it to his lips, not tasting the amber spirit as it burned down his throat, his eyes ever on Lacey’s.

“Jesus man,” Jones said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Tink followed his gaze and laughed. “He has.”

Just then one of the bar staff called out.

“Lace, we need those glasses!”

Lacey gave Gold a final little smirk and sauntered off back behind the bar, her hips swaying invitingly.

It took Gold a few minutes to fully return to his surroundings, letting a laughing Tink steer him in the direction of a table and lever him into a chair.

He had kept up with Lacey through Belle, asking after her recovery and recuperation in the way a friend would, and Belle had dutifully kept him posted on her progress and told him when she was safely back in the UK and fully recovered, but he had not pushed the point; he did not want to appear quite as desperate to see her again as he truly was inside. He had told Lacey that he would wait for her, and he had done so, but he had done so with no hope or agenda, no expectation of ever seeing her again. And here she was. Back in his life, in his domain, and looking happy to see him.

His waiting had not been fruitless. Lacey had come back to him, but she had done so in her own way. She was in control, the way she liked it, the way she felt comfortable with, and Gold realised in that moment that he wouldn’t have it any other way. If there were two things that he had learned about Lacey in the time that he had known her, it was that she was determined, and she was patient. If she wanted something, she got it, and in the end she didn’t care how long it took.

He wanted to go over to her and suggest that they leave the crush of the Rabbit Hole for somewhere quieter, but she was working, on the busiest night of the week, and he was meant to be hosting Tink. Ironically, of all the people round their table, Tink was the one who would most understand his absenting himself early and absconding with the barmaid, but Gold stayed put, sneaking the occasional glance over his shoulder at Lacey. He couldn’t quite believe that she was there in the flesh, and he had to keep checking that some unknown forces had not caused her to vanish back into the caverns of his mind.

Presently he turned but she had gone from his view, and Gold looked around for where she could be if she was not behind the bar. He couldn’t see her anywhere clearing tables, but the bar was so busy that this was not altogether surprising.

He just about managed to bite back an exclamation of surprise as he felt a hand encircle his calf and squeeze. He risked a surreptitious glance down; Lacey was under the table. She moved a little closer on her knees and smiled at him like the cat that had got several pints of cream, and although her intentions and destination were blindingly obvious, Gold was more concerned with wondering how on earth she had managed to slip under the table unseen. True, the arrangement of chairs and bench seating kept her largely hidden from view whilst she was under there, but surely someone would have seen her crawl into her little cubby hole?

His wonderings were cut short by two small but determined hands stroking up the insides of his thighs to run a fingertip over his trouser fly, just above where his arousal was making itself very apparent. Thank God the conversation had turned onto a topic that did not require much active input on his part, Tink and their other colleagues chatting animatedly and allowing him to enjoy the unexpected company that had joined him under the table.

Quietly and ever so slowly, Lacey’s hands came up to undo his belt and fly. He could feel her hot breath in his lap even through his underwear, and the first press of her warm, damp tongue to the cotton of his boxers almost made him jump out of his chair.

“Are you all right, Gold?” Tink asked, catching his sudden movement.

Gold nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak lest he emit a highly embarrassing squeak instead of any kind of coherent language. Lacey removed her tongue, but a split second later her fingertips were back, dancing over his tented underwear and carefully taking out his cock. Gold could not resist another look down at her. She was still grinning up at him, his cock in her hand, running her palm gently up and down his erection, thumb teasing the throbbing vein. Gold bit his tongue and grabbed the edge of the table for stability and to try and maintain some sort of composure. No-one seemed to notice that anything was amiss at his end of the table, although Tink did keep shooting him funny looks now and then. If she suspected, she was discreet enough not to say anything.

He had just about got used to Lacey’s tantalising touch when she decided it was time for the main event and she took the head of his cock in her mouth, swirling her tongue around it before taking him deeper and deeper. Gold’s knuckles were white against the table with the effort of not moving, of keeping his hips still and not jerking forward into her mouth. He didn’t want to make her gag, and he definitely did not want her to be discovered.

She let go of him then, pulling away, and Gold shivered at the temperature difference, from Lacey’s hot mouth to the comparatively chill air of the bar hitting his wet, sensitised skin. He felt her press a tender kiss to the very tip of him, and then she began to lick stripes up his cock. He’d never be able to see anyone eat an ice-cream cone without thinking of this moment. Lacey had officially ruined ice-cream for him, but in that moment, it was very hard to feel annoyed at her. In fact, it was very hard to feel anything other than spaced out pleasure. He hoped that no-one was trying to get his attention, because he was very sure that he was not going to be able to give it for the foreseeable future. Gold looked up and glanced around the table at his colleagues. No-one was looking at him with an expectant expression, so he thought that he might have got away with it, then Lacey took him in her mouth again and all coherent thought vanished.

He frantically scrabbled for a way to let her know how good she felt without the need for words. Even if he had not been in a very public place surrounded by his contemporaries, Gold doubted that he would have been able to form complete sentences, or even complete words, at that moment in time. Surreptitiously he dipped his hand under the table to cradle her head as she bobbed against his lap, her pace agonisingly slow and her tongue still teasing with every swipe over and around the end of his cock. Gold tightened his hand in Lacey’s hair as he felt the build-up of his orgasm beginning, the warm tendrils of ecstasy curling up in the pit of his stomach like a coiled spring, ready to unwind suddenly. He only hoped it would give her enough time if she didn’t want him to come in her mouth.

She didn’t move, and Gold came forcefully, biting down on his tongue so hard he tasted blood in his mouth. Around his cock, he sensed Lacey’s mouth moving as she drank down every drop of his seed, and the feeling was not like anything he’d felt before. He couldn’t suppress the groan of pleasure that rumbled at the back of his throat, and in doing so, he caught Tink’s attention again.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Gold?” she asked.

Gold nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tink raise her eyebrows, then give a devilish smile and thankfully, leave the subject alone. He peered down under the table at Lacey, who was idly tracing patterns over his softening cock with one fingernail. When she caught his eye, she daintily wiped the corners of her mouth and gave him her slow, seductive smirk. He was left with no doubt in his mind that he would be paying the favour back later in the evening.

With an almost perverse gentleness, Lacey tucked him back into his underwear and refastened his belt and fly, patting his crotch once he was decent again. She met his eyes once more and then moved away on hands and knees, out of Gold’s eyeline. He forced himself to look back up above the table and when he glanced back down, Lacey was gone completely.

A few minutes later, she was back behind the bar, as if the previous exchange had never happened.

Gold wished that he could just get everyone to leave with a wave of his hand or a fingersnap. He wanted to be alone with Lacey, and he briefly considered attempting to set the fire alarm off so that he could hide with her whilst everyone else got out until they had the place to themselves, but he gave it up as a bad job. Ten years ago he might have done something like that, but not tonight. He should have had more faith, really. Lacey had come back and she had shown herself more than happy to see him. He was not sure why he still felt the same twinge of nervousness when it came to reciprocation. Old insecurities played heavy on his mind and he shook them away with irritation. This was about him and Lacey, no-one else, and old demons could not and would not dampen the joy he felt at having Lacey back in his life.

“Gold, your round,” Tink said. She gave him a sly wink as he got up from the table to make his way through the crowded room to the bar, and it was then that he knew that she knew exactly what had gone on under the table. He trusted Tink. She’d been there when he and Belle had begun their mad dash across Europe to see Lacey; she had organised most of their journey. She knew the depth of feeling that existed despite their shenanigans.

“So, what can I get you, handsome?” Lacey was leaning on the bar next to him, smirking as usual, but it did not quite meet her eyes. The smile in her eyes was a genuine one of real happiness, and Gold felt his confidence increase as he reeled off the order.

“Thank you,” he said as she poured the drinks and began arranging them on a tray for him. “And thank you for earlier.”

Lacey gave a little snort of amusement. “I was in need of light refreshment and didn’t like the look of anything behind the bar.”

Gold quirked an eyebrow. “Well, I hope the alternative proved satisfactory.”

“Very satisfactory indeed.” Lacey pushed the tray towards him. “You ought to be getting back, before your colleagues wonder just how well you know me and start to piece two and two together regarding your earlier… _abstraction_.” She drawled out the last word, her tongue rolling over the syllables, and Gold felt heat begin to rush towards his cock again. The bar could not close quickly enough for his liking.

At that moment Tink appeared by his elbow to help him carry the drinks back to their table, and she exchanged a smile with Lacey.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

Lacey nodded. “I think everything’s going to be just fine, Tink,” she said, looking pointedly at Gold and licking her lips. Tink raised one eyebrow and made to drag Gold back to their colleagues.

“Come on,” she said. “If you stay there any longer you’ll give in to temptation and I don’t want to be the one to explain to everyone where you’ve gone if you fuck off for a quickie with a barmaid you’ve ostensibly never met.”

Gold let himself be led, balancing the drinks precariously; something far more perplexing than the possibility of sneaking off unnoticed with Lacey was occupying his mind.

“How on earth does Lacey know you?” he asked.

“I met her. That last morning in Rome. We bumped into each other in the toilets.” Tink sighed and stopped in the middle of the room, out of earshot of both the bar and their table. “She looked wrecked,” she said. “She was crying her eyes out and for a moment I thought something terrible had happened between you two. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’d seen you fifteen minutes prior and you’d seemed as if everything was rosy in the world, I would have been convinced that an awful catastrophe had occurred.” Tink smiled. “I knew how she felt about you long before you did, Gold,” she added. “Sorry that you’re the last to know.”

Gold blinked. All that time wondering what he had done, all that time trying desperately to work out Lacey’s feelings for him, and he could just have asked Tink.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he hissed, hoping to make his indignation felt without the need to raise his voice.

“Well, it was only my intuition,” Tink said. “I didn’t want to be the one to cause any upset in case I was wrong. Besides, things that get told, or not told as the case was, in ladies’ bathrooms tend to stay within those walls. Unless it’s a matter of life and death or law, there’s a certain code of confidence.”

Gold was not sure what to say in response to that; indeed he was so dumbstruck by the revelation that he stood opening and closing his mouth around words that refused to materialise for several seconds before Tink laughed and pulled him back towards their table again.

The night drew on, and Gold tried, unsuccessfully, to put his anticipation to the back of his mind. He continued to sneak glances towards Lacey, and she continued to meet his gaze with an easy smile and smouldering eyes. After what felt like an age, last orders were called at the bar and his gathered colleagues decided it was time to leave. Gold hovered by the table, knowing he ought to say goodbye properly but at the same time not wanting to leave the bar in case Lacey got the wrong end of the stick. In the end, it was Tink that saved him, going over to the bar, speaking a few words to Lacey, who grinned, then coming back and pulling him out of the door.

In the cold night air it was slightly easier to think straight, and Gold managed to make it through the farewells without any mishaps until it was just him and Tink left.

“I don’t expect to see you tomorrow morning before I catch my plane,” Tink began.

“Tink…” Gold tried to say, but she cut him off.

“I had better not see you tomorrow morning before I catch my plane,” she continued in a warning tone. “Lacey’s in there, happy and whole and well, and if you don’t spend the entirety of this weekend enjoying each other’s company, I shall make the return journey from Australia, yes, all twenty-one and a half hours, and personally bash your heads together. You’re getting a second chance that three months ago looked like it might never happen. Making the most of that is far more important than seeing me off after we’ve been living in each other’s pockets for so long. I’ll be annoying you on Skype soon enough. If you learned anything from my tutorials that is. Honestly, I don’t understand how you can be so hopeless with technology. I’m no longer surprised by the fact that you get on best with objects that were last used over a thousand years ago. Enough of that. Get in there and make it happen, or you’ll have me and Belle to answer to.”

It was a fond farewell. Gold had enjoyed his time working with Tink and he would miss her down to earth practicality, her completely unruffled demeanour and her wicked sense of humour.

“Go get her, tiger,” Tink added with a wink after their goodbyes had been said. Gold rolled his eyes, and watched her safely into a taxi before returning to the bar.

The rest of the patrons were leaving as well as he made his way over to the counter and slid onto a barstool, waiting for Lacey to notice his return. She was talking to the manager in one corner, and for a moment Gold was worried, but when she sashayed back towards him, a wide smile still on her face, he knew that something spectacular was about to happen.

She perched on the barstool next to him, not saying anything, just watching him, like she had done all those months ago in Rome. Their positions were so similar now to what they had been then, and Gold could not help but be reminded of the encounter that had led his life on such an unexpected rollercoaster.

“Lacey, we’re leaving you to lock up,” the other bar tender called from the door.

“Sure,” Lacey replied.

There was a pause, and then the young man spoke again.

“And make sure you leave the place clean!”

Lacey bit her tongue against a snort of laughter. “Sure,” she managed to choke out eventually.

Once the door was firmly closed, Lacey slipped out from behind the bar and sauntered over to the entrance to lock up.

“We can’t be doing with any unwanted interruptions, can we Prof?” she purred on her way back, dancing her fingertips lightly across his back and breathing the last word into his ear, her breath hot on his neck. Gold felt the sudden, stifling need to loosen his collar, and Lacey grinned at the action as she made her way back behind the bar.

Without warning, she braced both hands on the wood and jumped up onto it, landing on her knees. She straightened up, a wry smile spreading over his face; Gold’s eyeline was now level with her crotch. He raised one eyebrow.

“You look like you could use something sweet and refreshing, Prof,” she purred. “Anything behind the bar take your fancy?”

“Well, there’s something _on_ the bar that takes my fancy.” He stroked one finger up the inside of her left thigh until he met the barrier of her underwear, and he traced the length of her cleft through the gusset of her knickers before bringing his dampened fingertip to his lips and sucking her off it. “Very sweet and refreshing,” he said. “Any more where that came from?”

Lacey grinned and licked her lips. “I thought you’d never ask, Prof.”

She hiked up her skirt to her hips to show off bright scarlet underwear and slipped one hand down inside. “ _Mmmm_.” Even through the fabric, Gold could tell that she was fingering herself, rolling the palm of her hand over her clit, hips bucking forward as her other hand came up to tangle in her hair.

“You’re in luck, Prof,” Lacey said, her voice breathy and just short of a lust-fuelled growl as she withdrew her hand from her knickers, her fingers slicked with her glossy honey, and she pressed her slippery index finger against Gold’s lips. Almost on instinct, his tongue darted out to sneak a taste. “There’s plenty more.”

He took her hand then and set about licking her fingers clean, capturing every drop.

“Any chance I could go straight to the source?” he asked, once her hand was dry again. He hooked his middle finger into her gusset and tugged at it. Lacey smirked and cupped her crotch, pressing his knuckle up against her entrance. She shifted her hips, rubbing herself up against him and finally nodded, moving her hand and helping him pull her knickers down to her knees.

“I think that could be arranged,” she panted, arching her back to press her hips forward, presenting her cleft. She’d let her hair grow back a little, not a full nest of curls but a neat little patch crowning her glistening vulva.

“Something wrong?” Lacey asked when he didn’t move, just drinking in the sight of her again.

“Admiring your topiary,” Gold replied, running his hands up the backs of her thighs to squeeze her bottom. He glanced up at her face; her eyes were challenging, goading him to say something. He kissed her mound, dragging his tongue down to the top of her cleft. “I like it.”

He felt Lacey’s hand land on his shoulder and nails dig into the fabric of his jacket.

“Show me how much,” she breathed.

“With pleasure,” Gold growled in return, dipping the tip of his tongue into her cleft to swipe her piercing, and he smiled against her crotch as she shuddered in his arms. He brought one hand round to spread her nether lips, allowing him to run his tongue all over and around her clit and further back to probe gently at her entrance, eagerly lapping up the sweet honey that was pooling there. Lacey dug her nails into his shoulder blade, pushing her pelvis against his face; her musky smell was intoxicating but as much as Gold wanted to simply devour her, he still remembered the earlier tenderness she had shown him under the table, and he parted her folds to peck a kiss to her clit.

“Gold…” Lacey breathed, her voice hitching, “I… Yes…” But whatever she might have said was lost, her voice becoming a high keen as he swirled his tongue around her clit and over the piercing again. Gold could feel her legs shaking as she began to climb towards her climax, and he kept a firm hold on the backs of her thighs as he pressed his tongue into her cleft, hoping that it would be enough to bring her off.

He heard her shriek and knew he’d been successful, and a split second later hot, musky liquid flooded his mouth, dribbling over his chin. He swallowed her down just as she’d done him, and took a step back to look up at her face. Lacey looked back down through narrowed, orgasmic eyes. She’d somehow managed to undo the front of her shirt halfway whilst he was otherwise occupied between her thighs. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and the hand that hadn’t been clinging to him for dear life was fondling her nipple absently.

Gold wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and licked away the final vestiges of her delicious honey. Lacey gave a growl at the sight, and Gold returned her patented smirk before moving back to her exposed crotch. He pushed up the hem of her skirt where it was bunched up at her hips, making to kiss up her abdomen as far as he could reach, but Lacey tugged it back down, her hips wriggling awkwardly. He glanced up at her face to find her cheeks colouring, a light flush beginning to touch her skin. Gold knew what was making her, previously so confident in her bare skin, so embarrassed; he had seen the brief glimpse of the scar on her stomach, still stark from the accident those many weeks ago. He slipped his hand up under her clothes and touched the slightly raised line, looking up to meet her eyes.

“You are gorgeous,” he said. “I’ve got my contacts in so I can see that you are.”

The corner of Lacey’s mouth turned up in the hint of a smile. “Maybe later,” she said. “Not right now. Not yet.”

Gold nodded his understanding and wrapped his arms around her hips, lifting her off the bar to set her feet back on the ground. She kicked off her knickers where the fabric slithered down to puddle on the floor, and they slid out of sight under one of the tables.

“You do have a penchant for getting rid of your panties, don’t you?” Gold observed wryly. Her skirt had not quite fallen back into place as she landed on the floor and her bottom was peeping out from under the hem with every step she took, leading him by the hand over to one of the secluded booths at the back of the bar.

“Well,” Lacey purred, perching on the worn leather seat and leaning back, letting her legs fall wide open and inviting Gold between them with a crooked finger ,“even you have to admit that it does make life an awful lot easier, doesn’t it?”

Gold nodded, needing no further invitation to come closer. He settled himself between her legs and pushed her back flat onto the bench. Lacey seemed more than happy to let him take the lead, wrapping one leg around his hips and her arms around his back to pull him in closer for a kiss.

“So what dance is this?” Lacey asked when she finally broke away, her voice soft and husky and so very enticing. Gold remembered their last conversation, that morning in the hospital, and he smiled. Yes, Lacey was definitely dancing through life now, and he was more than happy to dance along to her tune with her.

“Horizontal tango,” he suggested.

Lacey grinned.

“I like it. I warn you now, Gold, I’ve got two left feet.”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll have any difficulties,” Gold said, leaning in to press his lips to hers once more. “We’ll just make it up as we go along.”

Lacey laughed. “Always the best way.”

She shifted her hips, rubbing herself up against Gold’s crotch, and after that, there didn’t need to be any more words as they found their rhythm and fell into a dance that would become all too familiar.

X

Belle looked out of the window over the darkened campus, but all she could see was her own reflection in the stark light of the library. It must be gone midnight, and there was still no word from Nick. She didn't mind, though. She knew what he was like. He could quite happily stare at a board for three hours without moving.

Presently her phone buzzed. Luckily she was the only one in that particular section of the library at that time of a night - no doubt when exam season started she would no longer have the place to herself - and no-one gave her any disapproving looks as she fished it out of her handbag eagerly.

The message was not from Nick, and Belle felt her insides twist a little. She was not unduly worried, but she still had that kind of sinking feeling that she got whenever a highly anticipated event did not come to pass. Tink had sent her the message, and that made Belle smile. The two women would not have had any contact with each other at all were it not for Gold, and Lacey by proxy, but they had bonded whilst organising that frantic trip to Rome and they had kept in touch long after.

 _Ah, young love_ , Tink had written. Belle's brow furrowed momentarily, then her puzzled reflection in the window became an elated one as realisation dawned. Lacey had come to Storybrooke. Belle knew that, it was not exactly a surprise. But now, fate must have finally intervened to bring Lacey and Gold together again. There was never any doubt in Belle's mind that Lacey would come and get her man eventually, but her twin had never been the most conventional of people and Belle knew that she was going to come and get him in her own way. Evidently, she had done so.

The phone buzzed again, this time it was a picture message. It was slightly fuzzy, taken candidly on a phone camera of dubious quality, but the picture was recognisable enough. Lacey was behind the bar in the Rabbit Hole, leaning on the wood and wearing her seductive smirk, and Gold was standing on the other side of the bar, leaning in. Belle couldn't see his face, but she was pretty certain that his expression would be matching Lacey's.

Another message followed.

_Somehow I don't think he'll be leaving with us._

Belle gave a snort of laughter; it echoed around the caverns of the deserted library and bounced back to her, the sounds eerily distorted, and she replied.

_Well, they've got my blessing. Now, to find my own scientist..._

She had barely put the phone down before Tink responded.

_Go get him girl. Make him see that there's more to life than numbers._

Belle smiled. She fully intended to do just that.

She moved away from the desk she had been sitting at to peer out of the window properly. The physics block was the tallest building on the campus. Lacey had theorised that it was so that all the science students could throw things off the top in the name of conducting experiments on gravity, and Tink had rather morbidly suggested that maybe physicists had the highest suicide rates of any of the students and the architects had very poor taste. Belle tended towards the former explanation. She cupped her hands around her face to block out the background light from the library, but the building across was still completely in shadows; there was no light burning in the top floor window where Nick's office was. Wherever he was, he was not there.

It was then that Belle caught a glimpse of bright light at the bottom of the building, peeping out from round the edge of poorly-fitted blackout blinds. It was the main lecture theatre. She smiled; it seemed that she had just located her man.

It did not take her long to sprint across the campus to the physics building, but the night was getting colder and Belle was glad her ID gave her twenty-four hour access so all she had to do was swipe and watch the doors open for her. She peered into the lecture theatre. Sure enough, Nick was there, writing frantically on the chalkboard in his unintelligible scrawl.

She entered the auditorium and sat down in the top level of seating. She was pretty certain that Nick hadn't even noticed her come in.

"When I said 'see you later', I wasn't anticipating it to be _quite_ so late," she said. Nick turned and glanced over his shoulder, giving her a brief, distracted smile. Belle let him continue for a while, until he finally reached the end of whatever it was that he was doing and put the chalk down, at which point she decided that enough was enough and she was going to make good on Tink's suggestion right now.

"Enough numbers now, Nick," she said, getting out of her seat and making her way down the auditorium to stand next to him in front of the board.

"You can never have enough numbers," Nick said. "They're the basis of everything in the universe, the idea of having too many is unthinkable."

Belle shook her head.

"You can have enough numbers when your girlfriend wants a kiss," she said, sliding her arms around his neck and pulling him down to meet her mouth. Nick didn't resist and his hands came down to rest on her waist. Belle was not quite sure how long they stayed like that, but she gradually came to the realisation that at some point along the way, in the midst of all the kissing and all the touching and Nick's hand finding its way up her back under her sweater, she had ended up leaning against the chalkboard. She turned and saw the smudges where Nick's scrawl had been.

"Ah," she said.

"Yes," Nick agreed. "Ah."

He let go of her and grabbed the board duster, rubbing out the majority of the equation and rewriting a little bit of it.

"There," he said, taking a step back and holding out the chalk. "Your penance for ruining two boards in one day. I think you should be able to work it out from there."

Belle raised an eyebrow as she took the chalk.

"When I thought I was going to get a thrilling and stimulating night with you, Nick, this was not quite what I had in mind."

Nick looked at her over the top of his glasses. “Are my equations not stimulating enough in their own right for you?”

Belle didn’t deign to grace that with a reply and just looked at him. He would cow under a look, eventually, if he was actually looking at her face and not down at his notebook. Today, he was looking at her face, and he gave a Mephistophelean smile.

“Well, I could always make the equation more interesting,” he said. “For every part of it that you solve correctly, I will remove one item of clothing. Get a part wrong, and you remove something.”

Belle put down the chalk on the front desk and stood with her hands on her hips.

“Only you, Nicholas Rush. I have heard of strip poker, I have heard of strip chess, I have heard of strip backgammon. I have even heard of strip scrabble, strip twister and strip battleships. Only you could think up strip mathematics.”

Nick spread his hands, leaning back against the first tier of seating. “Take it or leave it.”

Belle picked up the chalk and turned back to the board with a huff.

“You know,” she began, as she added up the letters and numbers in her head. “If you were normal, we’d be having sex on the desk by now. You must be the only man I’ve ever met who thinks that physics is an acceptable form of foreplay.”

“The thing is, Belle,” Nick’s voice said. He sounded slightly distracted and Belle glanced over her shoulder to find that he wasn’t watching her, he was leafing through his notebook. She rolled her eyes. “You are the only woman I’ve ever met who thinks that physics is an acceptable form of foreplay.”

Grudgingly, Belle had to give him that. She could already feel the heat curling up between her thighs as she continued to scrawl on the board. It was going to be a tricky equation, she could tell that. She’d seen the thing, however briefly, before Nick had rubbed it off the board, and she knew it took up pretty much the majority of the available space. Most of Nick’s equations did. At that moment she knew she would not be too averse to getting the entire thing wrong and ending up stark naked in the lecture theatre, Nick’s eyes on her bare backside as he talked her through the equation.

“How many parts are there?” she asked.

“Seven.”

“How many items of clothing are you wearing? Shoes count as one pair and your specs don’t count.” Belle did a mental count. She had seven items, so as long as she got at least two parts right she’d still have some dignity.

“Six.”

“So theoretically, if I get the entire thing right…”

“…I will indeed be naked and at your mercy, Miss French. The chances of that happening, however…”

Belle turned away from the board and threw the chalk at Nick.

“Your faith in your former PhD student is overwhelming, Dr Rush.”

He bent and held out the chalk to her without looking up from the notebook.

“I’m just being realistic.”

Belle narrowed her eyes at him and took the chalk. Right, that was it. She was going to outdo him, and then she was going to run off with his clothes and leave him to get back home in the nude. On second thoughts that might not be such a good idea. The anticipated sex would probably not be forthcoming if she did that.

She was still going to beat him though.

It took her fifteen minutes to solve the first part of the equation. Nick didn’t say anything as his eyes scanned the lines of letters and figures, he simply took his belt off and laid it on the table next to him. Belle smirked and turned back to the board. The second part was harder, and Belle didn’t notice the small mistake she had made until it was too late and Nick was rubbing it out to correct it.

She stepped out of her shoes and placed them neatly on the front desk, then reluctantly put them back on again when she realised that she could no longer reach the top of the board without the height her heels gave her. Belle began to pull up the hem of her sweater, but then she had a better idea. There was no rule saying that outerwear had to be removed first, after all. She waited until Nick was back on his perch in the auditorium, but before he could pick up that blessed notebook again, she hiked up her skirt to reveal lace stocking tops and suspender straps.

That caught his attention.

Belle had not worn stockings and suspenders deliberately for a seduction – she genuinely preferred stockings to tights – but for the purposes of the exercise at hand, she might well have done. She unclipped the stockings so that they slithered down to her knees, before reaching into her skirt at the back and unclipping the belt, letting it fall to the floor.

She kicked it towards Nick and focussed on the board again.

The next two parts of the equation she got right in quick succession, and Nick was still paying her no mind, engrossed in calculations. The man was absolutely maddening, even when he was getting very slowly undressed. Belle looked at the clock; she had been at this nearly an hour, and the long wait was doing nothing to dampen her arousal. Keeping her back to Nick, she surreptitiously slipped one hand into her skirt waist band and down to touch the gusset of her knickers. They were soaked through, and she was privately amazed that she hadn’t started a puddle on the floor beneath her. She felt for her clit through the fabric, determined to take the pressure off.

“I can already tell you that you’ve gone wrong, French.”

Belle jumped and pulled her hand out of her skirt, he’d _had_ to look up and start watching her when she’d been distracted. It was time for payback. She reached up under her skirt to pull her knickers down, and then walked calmly across the room, placing the wet panties over his notebook.

Nick looked up and met her eyes.

“The sooner you solve that equation, Belle…”

Belle huffed and lunged forward to kiss him before he could become distracted by maths once more. She wondered if she would ever come before his first and enduring love, that of numbers and letters dancing over a page, but decided that in the end, it didn’t matter, because mathematics was one thing they could love and appreciate together.

Like now.

She went back to the board and began the fifth part of the equation again. Taking off her knickers had been a bad idea; with no lace between her legs she was helplessly aware of how wet and slippery she was, and she pressed her thighs together to try and maintain a modicum of control over her arousal. By the time she’d solved the final bracket, she thought she was going to go mad.

“It’s correct,” Nick said. “But you had already got it wrong.”

“You didn’t tell me what I got wrong, though,” Belle said. “So getting it right now was entirely my own work. Now take off your shirt.”

Uncharacteristically, Nick did not argue and slowly unbuttoned his shirt. Belle shifted and felt wet on her thighs. She returned her attention to the board. As desperate as she was to feel Nick’s cock buried inside her, she was even more determined not to let this bloody equation defeat her. She picked up a new stick of chalk and continued, pointedly ignoring the throbbing need in her folds.

The final two parts of the problem were deceptively easy and Belle stood back to admire her handiwork, all the while worried that she might have made a terrible clerical error somewhere along the line.

“Nick,” she said. There was no response. “Rush! Put that bloody notebook down and look at the board!”

“I am looking at it.”

Belle glanced back over her shoulder and had to double take before she turned to face him fully. Nick was sitting on the edge of the table, naked, and oh God, he was hard as rock.

“Well done, Belle. It appears I underestimated you. Either that or it was beginner’s luck.”

Belle raised one eyebrow. Nick and her definitions of beginner were obviously very different, but she supposed that when compared against himself, Nick thought that everyone was a beginner.

She shrugged. “Call it what you will. I’m the one decent enough to get back home and you’re the one wearing no clothes and a raging hard-on.”

“This is true.” Nick got off the table and came towards her. “But if the way you were wriggling your bum and rubbing your thighs together during the last half an hour was anything to go by, you wouldn’t make it very far, would you?”

Belle shook her head.

“No,” she breathed. “Damn you, Nicholas Rush. You’re more observant than I gave you credit for. I thought you had your nose buried in that notebook the entire time.”

“Not the entire time.” Nick slipped his arms around her and ran them up her back and back down to cup her bottom, landing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “It was tempting after you deposited your wonderfully coated knickers there though. And being observant is an asset in our field. Being observant is what allows us to find the answers where everyone else sees a mess of numbers. Being observant lets us see the patterns no-one else does.” He punctuated his words with kisses to her cheeks, her nose, and finally her lips. “And if you were observant, Belle, you would have seen that you didn’t actually make a mistake on that fifth section.”

“You!” Belle batted his shoulder then sighed and carded her fingers into his hair to pull him in for another kiss, still letting him walk her backwards. “Well, at least I still won.”

There was a small thud and Belle felt her back hit the chalkboard, a cloud of white dust swirling around them. She could feel Nick’s erection jutting into her groin and the rumbling purr of pleasure in his chest as she kissed her way down from his mouth over his jaw, neck and shoulder. It was a great advantage having him bare already.

“Turn round,” Nick growled in her ear before biting down gently on the lobe. Belle did as bid, bracing her hands against the board and pressing her bottom back into Nick’s crotch. The noise he made was practically a snarl as his arms came round her again, up under her sweater to squeeze her breasts through her bra. Immediately, Belle felt her nipples stir into stiff points. “Fuck, Belle, those last ten minutes, just watching you working… I kept hoping you’d drop the chalk and bend over to pick it up so I could get a peep up your skirt, knowing I was holding your damn panties. I wanted to come over here and take you against this board so hard, like this…”

“Why didn’t you?” Belle breathed, arching her back to push her breasts more firmly into Nick’s hands.

“Because I also wanted to see you finish that equation.”

Belle looked down at the chalk from the board smeared all over her dark skirt, the writing irrevocably smudged from where she had leaned back against it and where her hips were now frantically bucking as she tried desperately to get some friction against her clit. With shaking fingers she unzipped her skirt and let it fall, stepping out of the puddled fabric and kicking it off to the side before pulling her sweater off over her head. She grabbed one of Nick’s hands from her breasts and put it between her legs, grinding against his palm as his cock rubbed against her bottom. He needed no further invitation and slid two fingers between her nether lips, rubbing along her folds. Belle gave her clit a firm pinch; after an hour and a half solving equations and getting ever hornier, she was in no mood to take things slowly.

“Just… Now…” she managed to say. “I want you right now.”

“Mmm.” Nick kissed the back of her neck. “Yes. Fuck yes. Give me a minute.”

“Now, Nick,” Belle moaned.

“Condom, Belle,” he countered.

“Good point.” He moved away and Belle took the opportunity to take off her bra; there was only so much that could be done for her aching nipples through the flimsy lace, and she ran her fingertips over the pebbled peaks, turning slightly to watch Nick rifling through the pockets of his discarded jeans before finally coming up victorious. Belle closed her eyes and felt the heat beginning to pool at the apex of her thighs again, and she reached down to touch her clit, silently pleading with Nick to hurry up and get back over here already. She was throbbing for release, and the urge to keep rubbing her clit and just come there and then after so long wanting was hard to resist, but then Nick’s cool hands were back, one coming round to rake through her matted curls, down into her cleft, around her clit and her own fingers busy there, and the other stroking her from behind, along her perineum and up to dip his fingers into her entrance, covering them with her honey. Her inner walls fluttered around nothing as he gave her a stroke and pulled out, and she heard the wet squeak of rubber being slicked. Belle looked over her shoulder, resting her head against one forearm braced on the board, and she saw Nick pumping his cock lazily, coating the condom with the juices on his fingers to lubricate it.

“Ready?” he asked gruffly, positioning his cock at her entrance.

“Nick, I’ve been ready since I first walked in here.”

He gave a grunt, whether of acknowledgement or laughter Belle did not know, and thrust into her in one long, hard stroke. There was neither finesse nor timidity in his movement, but Belle found she didn’t mind, rolling her hips to accommodate his length. As she moved forward, so her clit rubbed up against their fingers there, Nick’s holding her lips open and her own just waiting for that little bud of pleasure to kiss them on each jerk of her hips. With Nick pounding into her from behind, and his breath hot and heaving in her ear, and her fingers sending jolts of joy through her clit, it wasn’t going to take long before…

“Nick!”

Belle came in a bright burst of electric warmth, her orgasm intense and incredible after waiting for it for so long, and she felt herself tighten around Nick’s cock.

There was a jarring sound as Belle scrabbled for purchase, her nails scratching against the board. Nick ran one hand up her arm and threaded his fingers through hers, squeezing, giving her something solid to hold onto as she rode out her climax. It was such a small gesture but to Belle it meant a lot. She couldn’t see him, but she knew he was there beyond his cock inside and his hand between her thighs; she knew he wanted to share her moment of ecstasy.

“Don’t stop,” Belle panted, once speech and coherent thought had returned, the powerful fire dying back to a thrumming in her veins, and she felt him stiff and unmoving inside her. Nick responded with a soft bite and suck to her shoulder, not hard enough to leave a love mark but firm enough to send goosebumps shivering all over her sensitised skin, and he drew his cock out agonisingly slowly, the sensation prolonging the glorious afterburn of her orgasm to an almost unbearable level.

There was a knock on the lecture theatre door at the top of the auditorium and Belle froze, pressing herself flat against the board. A small, rather insignificant part of her reasoned that at least she still had her shoes and stockings on and was therefore moderately more dressed than Nick was.

A timid-sounding voice called through the door; Belle recognised it as one of the security boys.

“Dr Rush, is that you in there?”

“Fuck off!” Nick yelled, thrusting back into Belle with rough abandon.

“Ok, it is you.”

Belle had to bite her tongue to stop herself laughing.

“I can feel you giggling,” Nick growled as he continued to move in her. “Your pussy’s vibrating. Jesus Christ, Belle!”

He broke off and gave a guttural groan of release, his movement stilling, and he collapsed against her back, face buried in her sweaty and mussed hair. There was silence for a long moment, and Belle was content to stay as they were until she trusted her legs to hold her up. She brought Nick’s hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles.

“I think that was worth the wait,” she said. Nick didn’t respond, save to snake his other hand up to tweak one nipple, the shock rushing through her body straight to her clit.

“Shit,” he said after a moment’s silence. “My glasses are caught in your hair.”

Belle had to laugh.

At length they ended up curled up on the floor beneath the chalkboard. Belle rested her head on Nick’s shoulder as he worked his glasses free of her hair. She glanced down at her body, the powdery chalkdust smeared all over her stomach and breasts.

“Well, I think we thoroughly fucked up the equation,” she said. “In all senses of the word.”

Nick laughed, then gave a noise of triumph as he finally untangled his glasses and put them back on.

“It’s in the notebook,” he said, closing his eyes and wrapping his arms around Belle. “No harm done.”

Belle smiled. After a while enjoying the closeness, she reached over for her handbag and pulled out her phone.

“What are you doing?” Nick asked without opening his eyes, his fingers raking leisurely through her hair.

“Just checking in with Lacey.”

“It’s three in the morning.”

“It’s Lacey. If Tink is a reliable source of information, she’ll still be awake.”

He laughed and bent to kiss her shoulder before leaning back against the wall again. Belle nestled against his chest and typed out a message.

_You’re right. The faculty are thorough._

About a minute later, there was a reply.

_Don’t I know it. Can’t talk now, mouth otherwise engaged._

Belle smiled and tossed her phone back into her bag, leaning up to capture Nick’s lips in a kiss.

They were all going to be fine.

_Fin_


End file.
